Year: 1989 Runtime: 94′ Director: Bruno Mattei
Writers: Claudio Fragasso Cinematography: Riccardo Grassetti Music: Al Festa
Cast: Brent Huff, Mary Stavin, Werner Pochath, John Van Dreelen, Romano Puppo
TV reporter Maryline Kane (Mary Stavin) walks into a bar in Vietnam to hire war hero Sam Wood (Brent Huff) to relive his escape from a Vietnamese prison camp for the camera. At first, Brent isn’t too happy with the idea, but once Maryline has offered him enough money, he decides to take her up on her offer. After a nice little boat trip, Maryline, her two-men camera crew and Sam just happen to witness the execution of an American prisoner escaping from a camp full of prisoners of war. Turns out Maryline knows all about the war prisoner problem in the area, and actually wants Sam’s help in rescuing her father, General Weber (John Van Dreelen), from the prison camp, but thought that whole interview business and going to the place unarmed would make Sam more willing to help. Or dead. Or something.
Anyway, given Sam’s unarmed and unwilling status, the couple (and you know they’ll be one in this sort of movie, because they never agree about anything and hate each other’s guts) has to flee first. There’s also some stuff about Romano Puppo playing another guy who is supposed to buy the general’s way to freedom, but would prefer Kurt (Werner Pochath), the boss of the prison camp who will also turn out to be Sam’s arch enemy, to kill the guy so they can share the money. Which makes as much sense as Maryline hiring Sam to free her father without telling Sam about it, I guess. Plus, further complications because Sam doesn’t like Weber. Let’s just say that shooting and exploding huts – many of the latter without a good reason to explode – will result.
Under the pretense of a leaving on a school trip, a class of forty-two 9th grade students is drafted into the Battle Royale program – the Japanese government’s response to an exploding youth crime rate in a time of recession and social unrest. The children are forced to fight for their lives against their own desperate classmates, each of which has been given a survival kit complete with its own unique weapon (such varied items as axes, swords, machine guns and pot lids). If a sole survivor has not emerged within three days then the battle is forfeit, and everyone dies.
