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This little mediocrity is an attempt to show the misery of illegal immigration between the U.S. and Mexico (well, where else?: is there any misery between the U.S. and Canadian border?) But this attempt is a sad misfire. I have a feeling Charles Bronson was offered the part and turned it down since Savalas is all wrong as a tired, miserable, mostly friendless, near-retirement, border enforcement cop. Bronson or Rod Steiger, maybe, but Savalas is far too cool and commanding a presence to play such a loser role. Then again, the filmmakers can't seem to figure out if he's just another cop or some powerful hombre who is not to be messed with (Eddie Albert, as his superior, alternatively barks at him and cowers, looking for help from villain Michael Gazzo to stop Savalas since Albert is seemingly helpless). As it is, Savalas saunters through the film growling at everyone and making sure to keep his shirt split open to offer his lady fans plenty of Telly cleavage (probably a requirement he forced on the producers --written into his contract as the 'Open Shirt Clause.') Otherwise, you get a solid performance from Michael Gazzo as the smuggler king, and the sight of a little cutie named Cecelia Camacho. The film's "claim to fame" such as it is will be found in the rather gruesome slaughterhouse scene where no CGI, puppets, stand-ins or make-up effects were used: just good ol' fashioned cow slaughter. Never a pleasant sight to see where our meat meets its maker (although on a personal level I find Telly's cleavage slightly more gruesome). Lastly, there is the ridiculous finale where Savalas has the option to avoid a confrontation with his superior Albert and smuggler Gazzo, taking his pals De La Paz and Camacho to safety... but instead decides it would be more productive to seemingly kill himself and the two people he just saved in order to ram his beloved camper through the border gate and run over Gazzo inside the security office. And to top it off we don't find out exactly what happened afterward. Sheesh!

Directed by Christopher Leitch (the director of Teen Wolf Too and the writer of Universal Soldier) and written by Michael Allin (Flash Gordon, Truck Turner), this has Telly Savalas as border patrolman Frank Cooper.

Cooper has to balance doing his duty and empathizing with the illegal Mexican border jumpers. He also has to deal with his corrupt boss Moffat (Eddie Albert), who deals with coyote Suarez (Michael V. Gazzo), as well as protect a young Mexican man by the name of Benito Romero (De La Paz), who is on the other side of the border working in a slaughterhouse.

It's not the quickest movie but as always, Telly Savalas makes any movie that much better by being in it. There's nothing like hearing him say a line like, "Compassion? If I had compassion I'd stick a .357 up your ass and blow your brains out!"

Telly Savalas plays a veteran Border Patrol Agent in "Courage Mountain" director Christopher Leitch's "Border Cop," a tolerable tale about murder and corruption in the immigration service that co-stars Eddie Albert and Michael V. Gazzo. A veteran border patrol cop, Frank Cooper (Telly Savalas of "Kelly's Heroes"), has seven months left to go before he retires from the force. He isn't the kind of guy who courts trouble, unlike his fellow officers. In the opening scene, Cooper watches as his ill-fated partner tries to stop a smuggler who is transporting illegals strapped out of sight beneath his car. Cooper isn't really concerned about the issue of illegals crossing over and taking the kind of job that no self-respecting American would take. Nevertheless, Cooper has soft spot for a struggling young Mexican couple, Benny Romero (Danny De La Paz of "American Me") and his wife Leina (Cecilia Camacho of "California Dancing Club"), who have just married. Notorious Mexican smuggler Chico Suarez (Michael V. Gazzo of "The Godfather: Part II") wants Benny with his knowledge of ways to slip across the border to assist him with his day laborers that he sends out to work on the other side. The scenes in an American meat-packing plant are horrific, as we are treated to a documentary type short about how steers are slaughtered. One young illegal eager to prove his maturity tags along, but when he witnesses the brutal shooting and hacking up of the livestock, it turns his stomach. Benny assures his wife that he is only working for Suarez to get the money so they can get ahead. Meantime, since they are on opposite sides of the law as well as the border, Frank Cooper and Chico Suarez are virulent enemies. During Benny and Leina's wedding, Frank takes time out to tell Suarez, "Compassion? If I had compassion, I'd stick a .357 up your ass and blow your brains out!" This line qualifies as the most memorable in "Enter the Dragon" scenarist Michael Allin's dialogue. Basically, there are no surprises in this straightforward, sometimes exciting formula crime saga. Suarez is a brutal villain. He exploits his illegal workers, and he rapes Benny's wife after Benny creates a scene at the meat packing plant. The traumatized Mexican adolescent, who saw the dismemberment of the steers hides later during the day, but the supervisor tracks him down. As a callous joke, he drenches the poor youth with a bucket of steer blood. Naturally, a showdown ensues when Benny escapes and learns that Leina has been abducted by Suarez's henchmen. Meantime, Suarez has grown weary of Cooper's interference in his activities, and he threatens Cooper's immediate superior Moffat (Eddie Albert of "McQ") with exposure. You don't see either Moffat or Suarez get their richly deserved comeuppance at the border station when Cooper decides to across the border, ramming his way through the fence. Basically, the ending is vague, and we never know what happens. It is like they forgot to chart a believable ending. Savalas wears his shirt open, displaying his chest with various necklaces, including a cross, draped around his neck. Eddie Albert plays his corrupt boss, but nothing ever happens to him. "Border Cop" isn't as good as Charles Bronson's "Borderline." For the record, all the Border Patrol Agents are white Americans. Indeed, no Hispanics are on the force.

Telly Savalas kept the patented bald look in place a couple years after his acclaimed Kojak TV series came to an end. Here he plays the title character in a British production filmed in the UK and Mexico. I'd like to know how production companies make their filming decisions when I run across something like this. You would think there were enough British and European topics to tackle, but someone must have thought it was a good idea.

The story isn't altogether too bad, as it takes a sympathetic look at the plight of impoverished Mexicans who would do anything to cross over into the U.S. for a better life. The only trouble is, as we find here, there are any number of corrupt coyotes and border agents ready to take advantage of their situation in order to profit off of their sweat and labor. The slaughterhouse scene presented here is not for the faint of heart. I worked in a meat packing plant once, but that was a relatively sanitized affair compared to this. Every scene was like a gut punch, the one that got me was the guy sledging the dead bull's horns off off. I guess if you can disembowel cattle you can just about do anything.

The film stretches credibility with the actions of the film's young hero, Benny Romero (Danny De La Paz). The kid marches in challenging every symbol of authority at the sweatshop and puts himself in harm's way countless times to save his young friend Paco and wife Leina (Cecilia Camacho). He had miraculous recuperative powers as well, as evidenced by the amazing comeback against the Suarez henchman who knifed him in the back and razored his face in the saloon brawl. When Romero came off the truck at Suarez' place, he looked none the worse for wear and his face was perfectly clean.

But except for the kid being noble, this was pretty much Telly's flick. I don't know if I've seen Michael Gazzo as any character other than Frankie Five Angels in "Godfather II", but he was pretty effective here as the smuggling kingpin Suarez. Too bad the picture fell apart right at the very end when Cooper (Savalas) turned the bus around and rammed the border station for no apparent reason other than to end things in a slam-bang way, but what was the point? There was no follow up, and to my mind, Cooper and the Mexican couple could have wound up goners. Oh well.

One final note, and this is a real puzzler. Remember the Mexican café where the female hitchhiker tried to get Cooper to give her a ride across the border? The name of the café was 'El Beisbolista Fenomeno'. Translated, it means 'The Baseball Phenomenon'. Anyone know what that was all about?

A hard-boiled border cop out to bring down an immoral and evil smuggler of illegal aliens. Stars: Telly Savalas, Edward Albert. An interesting film mostly shot in Mexico. Tells the story about a soon-to-retire 'short-timer' Border Patrol officer (Savalas) who has good relations with people in Mexico and terrible relations with corrupt upper level Border Patrol bosses. This film is really 'Kojak goes to the Border'. It shows illegal aliens in a liberal silly sympathetic light as only mindless pawns in the sick power game between a Mexican smuggler coyote (Michael Gazzo) and corrupt Border Patrol boss, Albert. Illegals are about as interesting in this film as the cows processed in the coyote's meat packing plant. Interesting only for Savalas acting work on screen.

Frank Cooper (Savalas) is a tough guy working border enforcement on the Mexico border. He seems to have an ambivalent attitude about letting illegals cross over, preferring to take naps and let them cross. He is very close to his 20-and-out retirement. When his partner is injured and he gets a new one, Hale (Robin Clarke) he doesn't understand his ways. Cooper has plenty of clashes with Commander Moffat (Albert) - mainly because Moffat is corrupt and in bed with Chico Suarez (Gazzo). Suarez is an unpleasant and merciless Coyote, spiriting illegals into the USA to work at very unpleasant jobs where they are abused by the management.

One of Cooper's best friends is a young man named Benito Romero (De La Paz). He's a scrappy kid who just wants to have a good life with his new wife Leina (Camacho), so he ends up working for Suarez. Unfortunately, he gets trapped and can't come home. He and his compatriots are abused by their gringo bosses and Romero is seen as a troublemaker. Once Cooper gets wind of what's going on, he tries to sort out the situation in his own way...meanwhile Romero wants to get revenge on his captors. Is that possible in this dangerous world? Without Telly, there would be no movie. That's really the bottom line. While this is a dark, somewhat violent drama perfect for the drive-in era, only Telly's charisma saves the movie from utter mediocrity. In one of the more interesting turns in the film, Romero and his friends are forced to work in an abattoir - and there are graphic, extended, documentary scenes of cows being slaughtered, skinned and gutted. Why we need to see this, I don't quite know.

Illegal Mexicans come in strapped under a car Sideshow Bob-style at the beginning of the film, and that's when all hell breaks loose. Eddie Albert is a classic actor (not to be confused with Punchy himself, Edward Albert), whose career goes at least back to the 1930's. His role is fairly small, but important and he fills it well. His partner in crime Suarez is played by another classic actor, Michael Gazzo. Despite having a long and fruitful career, his name should be more well known. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out the movie Fingers (1978). He's in it and it's a great film.

Despite its flaws, mainly that the plot isn't as cohesive as it could have been, and could have used some more action, Border Cop is a relevant, serious movie that Telly fans should check out.

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I'll always mentally program this forgotten, Mill Creek 50-box set filler starring Telly Savalas alongside Robert Duvall's "The Ace" (1979; aka "The Great Santini") and Stuart Whittman's "Guyana: Cult of the Damned" (1979) as result of their birth on the early days of HBO. While those two films secured, albeit failed, limited theatrical (drive-in and indoor) distribution, indifferent studio confidence on this Mexican-shot British production resulted in "Border Cop" as one of the first films to eschew its intended theatrical release, instead heading straight to US cable TV (speaking of "The Ace": another failed film from the Orion Pictures' shingle was teen angst classic "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon).

Long before immigration became a hot-button topic during our last US election cycle, it was a hot-enough topic in the late '70s to inspire the production of not just one, but three (title-confusing) films: The other two being the vastly superior "The Border" (1982) starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel, and the weaker, more action-driven variant "Borderline" (1980) starring Charles Bronson and Bruno Kirby: each deal with the topics of corruption and profiteering as it relates to immigration issues -- with "Border Cop" as the more serious (and slow), introspective of the three.

For those who only know Telly Savalas as US television's "Kojak" (1973-1978): prior to the advent of that CBS-TV series, he enjoyed a successful, international starring/co-starring career in numerous films and television series. Sadly, after his five-year run on the US small screen; his bid to return to the international big screen quickly fizzled; co-starring in, yet another, bombing Pia Zadora-vanity production, "Fake-Out," (1982) closed that final, big screen curtain.

THE PLOT

Telly plays-to-type -- albeit a bit more hard-edged and profanity spewing for the theatres -- as a grizzled border patrol cop on the verge of retirement after twenty years in service; as such, Frank Cooper has gotten lazy in his duties. His attitude changes when he learns his commander, Moffat (Eddie Albert of the '60s US TV comedy "Green Acres"; he was a hard ass in "McQ" alongside John Wayne a few years earlier), is involved in a human smuggling ring (operated by Michael Gazzo of "The Godfather Part II" fame). Caught in the intrigue is Benny Romero and his wife: a young Mexican couple wanting a new life to whom Cooper offers compassion.

While the subject of human trafficking is sickening enough, the opening scene of humans strapped-concealed under a car is a horrifying, tough watch; also be wary of the scenes of the trafficked Benny forced to work in an abattoir; as with Ruggero Deodato's "mondo" slaughtering of a river turtle in "Cannibal Holocaust": the sensationalism of animal torture-murder kills any coolness Telly brings to the frames (he is, in fact, very good as the conflicted border agent). After those scenes: the action crawls and the narrative drags -- and everyone talks and talks, which gets worse once the film lapses into long stretches without Telly, and Eddie Albert, even less. If a cut of the film excised those two objectionable scenes: you'd have a flat TV movie -- which is why this ended up on HBO for its public debut, in the first place.

Certainly screenwriter Micheal Allin and director Christopher Leitch had high hopes for a film starring the then-hot Telly Savalas. Cinemaphiles may recognize Allin as the writer behind the Bruce Lee classic, "Enter the Dragon" (1973), the blaxploitationer "Truck Turner" (1974), the Burt Reynolds-rip "Checkered Flag or Crash" (1977), and the Star Wars-rip off bomb that was "Flash Gordon" (1980).

Yes, the Christopher Leitch, here, is one-and-the-same who later gave us Van Damme and Lundgren in "Universal Soldier" (1992). Starting as a screenwriter with the blaxsploitation sports comedy, "The Hitter" (1978), which he also directed, "Border Cop" proved to be his final theatrical feature -- well, three, if we count "Teen Wolf Too" (1987) -- as he transitioned into a rich career directing numerous US '80s television series and '90s telefilms.

Fans of the star can easily watch "Border Cop" on You Tube, Amazon's FreeVee, and as part of Mill Creek's 50-film "Swingin' Seventies" box set.