This is a guest post by Jon Warren, of http://tvandham.wordpress.com Enjoy!

It opens with sweat-dank hair. A man in a collared shirt walks downstairs and picks up the phone. Children are screaming and playing. His unnamed wife shouts at the children. They don’t seem to have a very healthy husband and wife relationship, and I recommend a marriage counselor, or maybe they’ve been seeing one for a while. I don’t know.

“Doc I need help, I’m losing it,” the man says. “I’m Loooosing it,” he sings. He looks a bit like Mick Jagger.

He drops his pills.

He walks outside, and gets an ax from the...firewood pile.

The axe man  chops a hole through the door, pausing to hack at an elderly man who interferes, who must be an uncle or some other relation, perhaps their on-site marriage counselor.

The killer kills the woman -- apparently his wife, with the woodsman’s axe, but not before she signals a passing mailman. Chuck Norris arrives. First on scene! Chuck...as you know the first thing you need to do is carefully inspect the area, making sure that the children are safe, and make sure that ...or you know, Chuck, you could go right into the house.

Sheriff Norris enters the house. After a brief battle, he disarms the killer Jagger. But the psychotic family man Mick Jagger double eludes him by jumping out of a window and tearing off across his roof. Norris, resplendent in a blue chambray shirt with a sheriff star pinned to it, follows. They fight in a tall weed choked area and Chuck disables the killer with a hard plank of firewood to the head. There seems to be an awful lot of loose firewood around.

Wow, the killer busted the handcuffs by strength alone. AND...he’s out of the back of the police cruiser. Would be irresponsible not to mention the overweight curly haired deputy named Charlie who is fumbling and given to accidents with his revolver. It’s Steven Furst from Animal House! I hope the Killer doesn’t shake him like a baby later and kill him.

Ron Silver just showed up as the meddling psych doctor. OK. Axe guy who looks like Mick Jagger escapes the police cruiser and starts fighting deputies.

They shoot him. The end.

We are in the hospital. I sense Jagger’s going to be part of an experimental new medical research project. Yes. Doctors with villainous brows inject Jagger with Mitagin 35. These doctors at this small town Texas hospital apparently are also doing experimental drug research that involves bringing people back from the dead. How come on NBC’s flagship medical drama, ER, the ER residents were sleeping in closets and giving free care to the homeless?

Brilliant psychologist and facial hair expert Ron Silver, stops the other two from injecting Jagger. “You guys know we can’t use Mitagin 35 until it goes through rigorous testing and committee validation.”

Woman slaps Sheriff Norris. He responds with “how’ve you been?”

Good characterization! More on this later. Or, actually, maybe not.

The doctors are going to go have drinks in their offices. They seem really upset over this axe murderer dying. I didn’t know ER doctors were allowed to drink on site. Shit. Two of the doctors went ahead and injected this guy with Mitagin 35...secretly, once Silver was off eating a hot pocket or boozing it up because he’s an alcoholic who uses any excuse to drink.

Shit is about to go down. You start playing with Mitagin 35...

Ron Silver and Chuck Norris are going to develop a partnership, of mutual respect. Law man of action and intellectual man of science, finding mutual magic in the hunt for a killer who has been brought back from the dead. Sherlock Holmes and Watson.

Ron Silver’s sister is the woman who slapped Chuck. She gives him a ride home from the hospital. They have sex.

Man in vest without shirt, and his friend show up at a diner, presumably the next day, where Norris and Charlie, the fat moke are eating hamburgers.. The shirtless bikers instigate trouble. Chuck handles them using Karate or Kung Fu.

“This ain’t over yet sucka,” a leading biker with a tan vest and hairy chest says. By leading I mean one of America’s best.

“It better be.” Norris says bluntly.

Charlie, the fat rookie, declares that the bikers left just in time. Now he has time to salvage a career from this ruin.

There’s some more meaningless chatter between Norris and Charlie. I’m not going to spend too much time lingering over that. I’m on the lookout for more mustaches. Over There. I see one.

Ah-hah. They injected the axe murderer and now he can’t be hurt, because he heals immediately. Ole Mitagin 35...

Excellent mockup of 1980’s high tech medical research computers complete with spreading genetic rays in a rainbow of colorful flux.

It took me this long to realize something...Silent Rage is a retelling of Frankenstein in the “modern” age of 1982.

Forward to biker bar/outlaw pageant.

These innocent bikers are in a bar having a pageant and mean ole’ turnkey Chuck “Badger” Norris just showed up with Charlie in tow.

Chuck beats up an entire biker bar and a motorcycle is sent through the window. Also, is that firewood again? I think I see firewood.

The dead man is up and now on the hunt. He is wearing a space-age jumpsuit that was helpfully provided to him by his medical staff. He assaults the doctor, Ron Silver, in his house. Ron throws photo developing liquid in Jagger’s eyes when Jagger walks in.

Silver shoots Jagger.

Jagger rises. He comes for the doctor.

The doctor shoots Jagger again, this time in the stomach. Don’t check his vitals Doctor. Remember, he’s invulnerable due to the Mitagin 35. Well. I called it. Jagger wakes up and he defeats the doctor. See ya later Ron! See ya in Timecop, bro.

The doctor’s wife or girlfriend returns. “It’s cool, Ron is just sleeping from a hook.”

Jagger pursues Silver’s lady friend. After an extended chase, Jagger defeats her.

FranknenJagger heads back to the medical facility, Umbrella Hospital in Raccoon City.

After some interminable stuff, Jagger defeats the doctors.

This is what happens when you play around with Mitagin 35, guys.

Charlie and Norris’s girlfriend are in a hospital room and Jagger is coming. Jagger kills Charlie in a particularly gruesome manner by shaking him like a baby until his back breaks. I’m sorry about Charlie an’ all, but I feel like this movie is responsibly making important points about shaking fat people.

Jagger chases Norris Girlfriend through the hospital. Fast Forward through the inevitable suspenseful narrow escapes.

We are here at last. The ultimate show down between the invulnerable Jagger and Norris. They start to dance like men, under the skin of black night.

Chuck deftly throws Jagger, bodily. But Jagger is now tossing around Norris like a rag doll. Jagger pauses to gloat in his quiet, invulnerable way. Norris takes the opportunity to kick Jagger’s feet out from under him. Choking action. Norris flips Jagger over and does a running kick and chops down with scissor action. The invulnerable Jagger swings and misses. Again. He now connects. But Norris connects with a slow motion kick. Jagger is briefly out. Norris drags Jagger to a poorly-covered well (covered with firewood!) and begins to slide him into the well. Jagger wakes up and starts to choke Norris. Oh man, this is getting close. This fight is now in overtime. Norris almost goes in the well. Jagger almost takes off with his woman and they are going to get married and start a business.

But Norris is up again, punching and kicking and he unleashes a flurry of punches and kicks, and then knocks Jagger into the well. Jagger emits the first sound since he died and was brought back to life, into this uncaring, merciless world of hospitals and karate. He screams. Synth starts warbling. Norris takes his girlfriend home. The final shot of the movie is Jagger in the well, bursting out of the water, one hand clutching a length of firewood.

Final Count:

16 Mustaches.

9 Killed in action

4 Firewood

Best Mustache. You pick.

Review by Ian Patrick

He's the kind of guy that would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss in your campfire.

On Deadly Ground, written and directed by Steven Seagal was seen, along with Under Siege 2, as basically ending Seagal’s career as a box office star. What followed was a series of straight to VHS budget numbers produced in Europe and Asia. But was it really that terrible? Probably.
 
In some respects Seagal was the also ran amongst 90’s American action stars. You get the impression that he was the go to guy when Bruce and Sly were too expensive, or otherwise engaged. However, Seagal also had a certain gravitas that other action stars lacked. Maybe it was that narrow, slow and unblinking stare, maybe it was the fact that he looked vaguely Native American, maybe it was his impossibly square head or maybe it was the pony tail. Either way, it’s that sense of authority and weight that On Deadly Ground plays on.

Seagal plays Forrest Taft (another excellent action hero name, which also plays on the environmental theme of the movie) a tough talking Native of Alaska who works putting out fires on oil rigs. He smokes cigarettes and drinks liquor from a hip flask. Early in the film he is called to a fire on Aegis 1, a rig that is due to open in 13 days. Realising he can’t extinguish the blaze, he sets it to blow to avoid the fire spreading. As he tells the oil workers to run back, he casually takes out a cigarette and lights it on the fire, walking away from the explosion behind him. Here we are introduced to Michael Jennings, an oil baron and Taft’s boss. Jennings, played by Michael Caine is quickly set up as the antagonist, and, Michael Caine continues to be Michael Caine throughout as he is wont to do.

We quickly learn from the foreman on the rig, who also happens to be a close friend of Taft, that the fire was a result of faulty equipment. Taft then hacks into the rig’s security system and discovers that faulty parts are being used because a new shipment of parts will not arrive for 90 days. If the rig doesn’t get up and running within the deadline the oil rights shall be returned to the Natives. The foreman is later taken out by Jennings’s henchmen, one of which is played by Dr Cox from Scrubs, and Taft is sent to tackle another fire. This time it is a set up. Inside of the blaze, he finds the body of the foreman, and also discovers a shit ton of dynamite. He runs but the explosion engulfs him. Jennings’s and his men are seen leaving the scene in a chopper, presuming our hero to be dead.

Taft is then discovered by a band of Eskimos and his body is taken back to their village. He is brought back to health with the aid of the Eskimo chief’s beautiful daughter, who happens to be played by a Chinese actress. Presumably this is because Eskimos can’t act, and Chinese people basically look the same, right? The chief, the daughter and Taft then go on a vision quest, wherein Taft sees himself wrestling and slaying a bear, and watches a Native woman, looking all savage and naked, dance for him. It’s not like Hollywood to stereotype like this.

Taft then decides he must take care of business, and taking care of business means killing a bunch of people and blowing the rig up. Now, I’m not exactly sure why he decides to take this course of action, especially since the foreman conveniently left Taft a floppy disk containing evidence of the faulty equipment used. Surely he could have just taken this to the press or the relevant authorities and got the rig closed down? I guess this would have been a pretty short and boring movie, but at least we would have be saved a lot of painful moralizing on Segal’s part.

Talking of moralizing, this film contains a lot of it, usually in the form of hammy one liners and speeches coming from the mouth of Taft. During a scene early on, Taft is in a bar (I think he may have a drinking problem) and witnesses a burly oil worker bullying a Native. Naturally, Taft takes exception to this and teaches the guy a lesson - with his fists. For some reason he also decides to beat every other oil worker in the bar to a pulp. After giving the bully a new face, he asks the guy a simple yet deep question that cuts to the very core of the bad dude’s soul: “what does it take to change the essence of a man?” Segal enquires, “I need time to change” the guy replies while weeping.

Another golden moment is the speech Taft gives to the Chinese Eskimo when she asks why they don’t just try and alert the press or something instead of unleashing hell, Taft passionately replies:

What do you want me to learn Masu, huh? I mean, do you really think that this hocus pocus spirit stuff is going to help us now? What do you think, some angel is going to miraculously come down out of the sky and stop, say, 350 billion tons of oil from being spilled into our oceans every year? Maybe some ghost will stop all the cars from using gasoline. Maybe, maybe somehow, some spirit will trip the big switch and all the technology that's been repressed for the last 70 years will suddenly be ours and it'll be a better place to live, a beautiful place. Maybe I should send my spirit guide over to Aegis One to stop it from going online, so that Jennings can't fuck you and your people out of your land and your way of life forever. See, I love the spirit world and I loved your father, but none of that matters right now. What really matters is the cold, hard reality of this world, and that's what we gotta deal with. I didn't want to resort to violence; I don't have a choice. And I'm not taking any chances this time, because I can't!

And so Taft, with Chinese Eskimo in hand, heads to Aegis 1 to fuck shit up. Luckily, for reasons unknown, he not only has access to lots of high powered weaponry, but enough explosives to destroy a small country. The two ride on horseback through the Alaskan wilderness, followed by Jennings henchmen and a bunch of mercenaries that have been put on the job. Taft leaves booby traps behind, blowing up a helicopter, a few guys and a horse along the way.

We then learn that Taft is a badass that has worked as a secret agent at a level of secrecy that even hacking into the government's top secret files does not reveal. What is it with Segal playing regular dudes that just so happen to have a secret and brutal past? Anyway, Taft makes it to the rig and methodically works on blowing up sections of Aegis 1 while taking out dozens of bad guys in the process. There is one moment where he ingeniously uses an empty coke bottle as a silencer and shoots an unsuspecting thug in the face without being heard. Naturally both Dr Cox and Jennings get their comeuppance. Taft then sets the whole thing to blow, he explains how this will prevent an oil spill but I’m not exactly sure of the science behind that.

As an action movie, On Deadly Ground works in some respects. There are plenty of explosions, fist fights, and killings. It’s just that the movie’s cheap attempt to have a moral centre pretty much ruins everything. Also, the acting and dialogue is hammy beyond redemption. It’s not even the good kind of hammy either, there is barely a memorable one liner of note. At the end of the film, we are treated with this speech.

On Deadly Ground is also a film of contradictions. Taft is cast as the films moral centre, who also happens to enjoy beating unsuspecting oil workers half to death and shooting a whole bunch of guys; he plays an environmentalist who has no problem in blowing up horses and oil rigs; he rails against the oil industry while also taking a healthy wage from said industry. Maybe it’s a Jungian reflection on the duality of man, or maybe it’s all just a flimsy frame on which to hang some action on.

Kill count: 42
Moustache count: 24
Best moustache:

Review by Ian Patrick

Why don't they just call him Girl George? It would cut down on the confusion.

Following the huge success of Terminator (1984) Arnold Schwarzenegger followed it up with Commando, which out grossed Terminator and cemented the Austrian as Hollywood's go to action star. In order to avoid being typecast, this time around Arnold played a human being.
 

In Commando, Arnie takes the role of John Matrix - perhaps one of the greatest action movie characters names of all time - a retired special forces Colonel who is called back into action to save the life of his daughter. Lots of death, explosions and moustaches follow.

The film opens with a middle age man being rudely awakened by a garbage truck driving down his street. He asked his wife what the hell is going on, because Tuesday is not garbage day. Maybe the schedule has been changed, she suggests. So our bumbling idiot rushes outside with the trash, chasing after the truck. He finally catches up, and with a sense of relief says "I thought you were going to miss me" to the two gentleman escorting the vehicle. One of the trashmen is smoking a cigar, and I would suggest that you never trust a garbage disposal worker who smokes cigars on the job. One of the guys responds that they don't intend to miss, and they both pull out uzi's and indiscriminately pepper the poor fellow with lead.

We then see the two men in different guises taking out two other unsuspecting victims. Something is amiss here, the viewer must think.

The action then cuts to a series of close up shots of mesomorphic muscles glistening in the sunlight. The shot pans away, and we get our first shot of Arnold, flexing his muscles as he carries a enormous log to a secluded house in the woods. He then gets to work chopping the wood, only to spot something in the reflection of his axe. He turns around to pounce, and gathers a small girl in his arms. We are introduced to his daughter, Jenny, played by a very young Alyssa Milano.

We are then treated to the classic action movie staple, the montage. Only this isn't a typical montage film with violence or images from the protagonist's past. No, we are treated to a series of tender moments showing John spending time with his daughter. They eat ice cream, he teaches her martial arts, they feed a deer by hand in the woods, and they go fishing. We get to know John as a loving Father with a lot to lose.

The two then sit down for lunch, only to be rudely interrupted by an Army Helicopter landing in their back yard. Jenny pleads with her Father not to go away again, he wont, he assures her. John goes outside to see what the deal is, and meets with his old boss. It turns out that the trio of men murdered in the opening of the movie were John's former 'men' and there is every reason to suspect that John is next on the list. Apparently he has made a lot of enemies. The chopper flies off, with two guards left behind with the task to protect John and his Daughter.

Almost immediately a gun man appears out of a bush and reigns fire down on the group. One guard is killed and the other is badly injured. John urges Jenny to run to her bedroom and hide, and tells the injured guard to wait while John goes to fetch his rifle. As look would have it, he happens to have an armoury worthy of a small warring nation in his house. He quickly dispatches of several fools and rushes to Jenny's bedroom, only to be confronted with a mysterious man relaxing in a chair. Jenny, has been taken away, and John is informed that the man's employee has some business for John, and that he better co-operate if he wants his daughter back. 'Wrong' replies John and shoots him in the face. Obviously our hero didn't attend diplomat school when he was training for the forces.

John sees a group of cars driving away, presumably with his daughter, so he rushes to his own Jeep, only to find that the insides of been gutted. In another show of his brute strength, he pushes it down a small ravine and hops in, colliding with the escaping vehicles. After a brief fight, John is over powered and his confronted by Bennett, a former colleague with a grudge after being dismissed by John from his special forces unit. Bennet then shoots John point blank in the stomach, luckily it is only a tranquilizer dart.

John then awakens in a warehouse, chained to a table. It turns out that Bennett's boss wants John to overthrow the President of an Island Nation, in turn John will get his daughter back. He reluctantly agrees and is sent to the airport with two escorts, one which will accompany him on the flight. If nothing is heard from them, the daughter will be killed, John is informed. As the plane is taking off, John decides to break his escort's neck and covers him with a blanket and a hat. A flight attendant comes along, and we are treated to our classic Schwarznegger one line "don't disturb my friend" John says, "he is DEAD tired". John then makes his way to the cargo bay of the plane and escapes just as it is taken off.

John then makes his way to the airport and sees the other escort hassling a woman. After following the woman to a parking lot, he gets her to agree to lure the escort to him, only after tearing the seat out of her car with HIS BARE HANDS. Unfortunately, the woman betrays him and informs the police. A two way fight/shootout ensues between the cops, John, and the escort. At one point the escort enters a telephone booth to warn his boss that John is not on the flight, only for John to rip the booth out of the ground, lift it over his head and toss it on the floor. The man escapes, and car chase ensues, ending with John dropping the guy off a cliff. "I dropped him" replies John, when asked by the woman of the wear abouts of the bad guy. At this point the woman becomes John's sidekick, presumably feeling guilty for ratting on him. Luckily enough, she is currently learning how to fly a plane.

Another bad guy is killed, in a motel room where he was due to meet with John's former escort, then our two heroes make there way to a warehouse where they presume Jenny is being kept, after finding a clue in the bad guy's car. There is no Jenny in the warehouse, but a lot of bad guys and weapons. After killing a few chumps and making his way to an office at the back of the building, John and his partner figure out that Jenny is being kept on a small Island off the coast, and that there is a boat plane nearby. Turns out the girl's ability to fly comes in handy. Are we going, the intrepid woman asks. Yes, but first they must go shopping, John replies. Presumably he doesn't intend to stock up on Kool-Aid and pizza pockets. Indeed he doesn't as we seem him crash into a weapons store and clear the place off all its heavy weaponry and automatic rifles. Only the police arrive and John is wheeled away. Luckily, the sidekick lady picks up a rocket launcher that John placed in the back of the car, fires it at the travelling police truck with John inside, causing it to tumble and allowing John to escape.

They then land in the sea nearby the Island which appears to be some sort of military complex, and John uses a dingy to sail ashore, taking his weapons with him.
What follows is absolute carnage. Utilizing guns, grenades, explosives, axes, projectile knives and saw blades, our hero dispatches basically the whole Island. Leading to this famous kill sequence:

This leads to a final showdown with Bennett's boss, and then Bennett himself. I wont spoil all the fun, but it ends with John uttering the immortal line, "hey, Bennett, let off some steam". Needless to say John and his daughter are reunited.

Overall, Commando has everything you could want from an 80's action flick. A skeleton of a plot, and lots of killing by a musclebound hero who mutters endlessly quotable one liners. Sadly, it does lack in explosions, with only one major fireball, although it does have faceless bad guys satisfyingly tossed in the air. Another downside is the soundtrack, which is generic John Carpenter light fare, apart from this gem of a closer:

Kill count: 99
Moustache count: 44 (approximately, there were times when there were so many guys on screen getting shot at the same time that it was hard to keep count of the facial hair.
Best moustache: