Having really enjoyed "Manhunt" from director Fabrizio De Angelis starring Ethan Wayne, I decided to give this one a go. Thunder Warrior covers similar ground in a number of ways; beautiful American Southwest desert locations, spaghetti western style score from Francesco De Masi and long car chases with a number of slow motion crashes. I love the American west, I love car chases and Francesco De Masi's scores usually fit these locations perfectly. I particularly liked his scores in De Angelis' "Manhunt" and Chuck Norris' "Lone Wolf McQuade". Upon seeing the spectacular shots of Utah's Monument Valley in the intro coupled with another excellent score, it all got off to a good start. But by the time the credits rolled I was feeling distinctly underwhelmed and am not going to recommend it for several reasons.
Mark Gregory plays "Thunder", a native American who returns to his hometown only to find construction workers inconspicuously blowing up gravestones in his cemetery with dynamite. After a slow-mo fight, he goes to the local sheriff who orders him to back off. After protesting at the bank who's funding the construction workers, he's escorted out of town by the nasty Deputy Barry Henson who threatens him not to return.
He coincidentally runs into a group of construction workers led by Thomas (Antonio Sabato, father of the great non-actor Antonio Sabato Jr.) who beat him to a pulp and leave him in the desert. He returns to the town only to be spotted by Deputy Barry and his gang, only to get beaten again. He escapes, jumps in a pickup truck and a car chase follows with a number of police cars crashing and some pretty cool stunts and slow motion shots.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned car chase is by far the best action scene the film has to offer. It's pretty much a yawner from here on. A cat and mouse game ensues, and it really doesn't know where it wants to go. The next half hour or so has Thunder fighting with several police officers and warning them to "Back off or you'll all end up like Custer", badly wounding Deputy Barry with a crossbow and a television reporter who sides with him and contacts a radio host who glorifies Thunder as a hero, which doesn't seem to have any real point.
Antonio Sabato and his thugs get hold of a bazooka and kidnap Thunder's girlfriend. Thunder of course runs into them and kills them, saves his girlfriend who tells him to "Show the white men how an Indian fights". Thunder takes the bazooka, which seems to have an infinite supply of rockets. He then steals a bulldozer and drives into town in it, smashing threw a roadblock and firing at a police car with the bazooka, which only blows the hood off and sets the front alight. He then destroys the police station by driving threw it with the digger, then drives into the bank and proceeds to attack it with his bazooka by standing only inches away from walls and firing at it, which creates a small explosion and a fire. Now, I can't claim that I've ever used a bazooka, nor am I a weapons expert or anything of the kind so correct me if I'm wrong, but I certainly would have thought they're about 10 times more powerful than that, and if it were to hit a car the whole vehicle would blow, not just the hood.
So the bank is now surrounded by police from all angles and it certainly looks like there's no way out. A cop whose life Thunder apparently once saved enters the building and somehow gets him out while surrounded by all these police and the credits role. Yes, that's it. Nothing even happens to Deputy Barry, who was an exceptionally nasty creature who vowed to kill Thunder for injuring his brother, also a deputy.
Being an Italian film, much of the cast and crew are Italian and the version I watched was dubbed in English. It makes it's first mistake though by casting Italian Mark Gregory as a Native American, which makes it all the more cringeworthy in the scenes where he makes racial comments like "Back off or you'll all end up like Custer" and when the girlfriend says "Show the white men how an Indian fights", the latter of which was especially embarrassing since there is no Indian in this film, and those cast as such are of exactly the same race as many of the Italian actors playing "white men". Not only is Mark Gregory not a convincing native American, he's not a convincing tough guy either. He's very un-emotive and walks oddly to say the least.
The production values are by far the best asset of the film. Despite a fuzzy looking picture on the VHS I watched (I can only assume that was because of the age of material rather than the film itself), the photography and locations are beautiful and it's amazing how many cars (many of which looked new) and buildings they managed to destroy in a low budget production.
Overall, it makes for a fairly tedious 90 minutes. Despite one entertaining chase scene and beautiful locations, it trips up on way too much to possibly recommend it. And yes, it is indeed a huge rip off of Rambo: First Blood, and a bad rip off at that. Unless you're a huge fan of Italian cinema, then I'd recommend giving it a wide berth. The rest of you should just watch First Blood for the 100th time. Despite it's obscurity and ineptitude in most angles, it must have been fairly successful on the rental market in that it managed to spawn not one, but two sequels. Part III manages to be worse at every angle which is quite an achievement, but it falls into so bad it's good territory.
Mark Gregory plays "Thunder", a native American who returns to his hometown only to find construction workers inconspicuously blowing up gravestones in his cemetery with dynamite. After a slow-mo fight, he goes to the local sheriff who orders him to back off. After protesting at the bank who's funding the construction workers, he's escorted out of town by the nasty Deputy Barry Henson who threatens him not to return.
He coincidentally runs into a group of construction workers led by Thomas (Antonio Sabato, father of the great non-actor Antonio Sabato Jr.) who beat him to a pulp and leave him in the desert. He returns to the town only to be spotted by Deputy Barry and his gang, only to get beaten again. He escapes, jumps in a pickup truck and a car chase follows with a number of police cars crashing and some pretty cool stunts and slow motion shots.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned car chase is by far the best action scene the film has to offer. It's pretty much a yawner from here on. A cat and mouse game ensues, and it really doesn't know where it wants to go. The next half hour or so has Thunder fighting with several police officers and warning them to "Back off or you'll all end up like Custer", badly wounding Deputy Barry with a crossbow and a television reporter who sides with him and contacts a radio host who glorifies Thunder as a hero, which doesn't seem to have any real point.
Antonio Sabato and his thugs get hold of a bazooka and kidnap Thunder's girlfriend. Thunder of course runs into them and kills them, saves his girlfriend who tells him to "Show the white men how an Indian fights". Thunder takes the bazooka, which seems to have an infinite supply of rockets. He then steals a bulldozer and drives into town in it, smashing threw a roadblock and firing at a police car with the bazooka, which only blows the hood off and sets the front alight. He then destroys the police station by driving threw it with the digger, then drives into the bank and proceeds to attack it with his bazooka by standing only inches away from walls and firing at it, which creates a small explosion and a fire. Now, I can't claim that I've ever used a bazooka, nor am I a weapons expert or anything of the kind so correct me if I'm wrong, but I certainly would have thought they're about 10 times more powerful than that, and if it were to hit a car the whole vehicle would blow, not just the hood.
So the bank is now surrounded by police from all angles and it certainly looks like there's no way out. A cop whose life Thunder apparently once saved enters the building and somehow gets him out while surrounded by all these police and the credits role. Yes, that's it. Nothing even happens to Deputy Barry, who was an exceptionally nasty creature who vowed to kill Thunder for injuring his brother, also a deputy.
Being an Italian film, much of the cast and crew are Italian and the version I watched was dubbed in English. It makes it's first mistake though by casting Italian Mark Gregory as a Native American, which makes it all the more cringeworthy in the scenes where he makes racial comments like "Back off or you'll all end up like Custer" and when the girlfriend says "Show the white men how an Indian fights", the latter of which was especially embarrassing since there is no Indian in this film, and those cast as such are of exactly the same race as many of the Italian actors playing "white men". Not only is Mark Gregory not a convincing native American, he's not a convincing tough guy either. He's very un-emotive and walks oddly to say the least.
The production values are by far the best asset of the film. Despite a fuzzy looking picture on the VHS I watched (I can only assume that was because of the age of material rather than the film itself), the photography and locations are beautiful and it's amazing how many cars (many of which looked new) and buildings they managed to destroy in a low budget production.
Overall, it makes for a fairly tedious 90 minutes. Despite one entertaining chase scene and beautiful locations, it trips up on way too much to possibly recommend it. And yes, it is indeed a huge rip off of Rambo: First Blood, and a bad rip off at that. Unless you're a huge fan of Italian cinema, then I'd recommend giving it a wide berth. The rest of you should just watch First Blood for the 100th time. Despite it's obscurity and ineptitude in most angles, it must have been fairly successful on the rental market in that it managed to spawn not one, but two sequels. Part III manages to be worse at every angle which is quite an achievement, but it falls into so bad it's good territory.