Killer Force

Dir. Val Guest

102 Minutes

USA

1976

Starring: Telly Savalas, Peter Fonda, Hugh O'Brian, Christopher Lee, O.J. Simpson, Maud Adams, Ian Yule

***1/2/*****

Jeez, what a picture! From the get-go, the cast is a little nuts. Teddy Savalas and Peter Fonda, sure. And then OJ Simpson and Christopher Lee get involved? Savalas plays a tough, no-nonsense, but also paranoid head of security to a diamond mine deep in the desert. His fears turn out to be quite valid, as a team of five (the killer force!) are indeed planning a heist, and recruit Mike Bradley (Peter Fonda) as an "inside man" of sorts to assist them. The plot is fairly secondary and mostly incoherent at times, with certain twists presenting themselves not through any force of logic but because the narrative insists that it is necessary at this point in time. But the action is what the people come to see, and the film delivers with quite the insane, batty, and violent third act climax that culminates in the promise of a sequel of never came (so not just a contemporary habit). Director Val Guest keeps the action movie, and the film is never dull once the mechanisms start turning. There is a full ridiculousness to this business, but the film is highly (and thankfully) as advertised.

August 19th, 2019