Ruptured Review: Blastfighter

Country of origin- Italy 

Year of release- 1984  

Director- Lamberto Bava (as John Old Jr.)                            

Stars- Michael Sopkiw, Valentina Forte, George Eastman
          
The film follows Jake ‘Tiger’ Sharp (played by Michael Sopkiw of 2019: After the Fall of New York fame) who is a former police officer who has just been released from an 8-year prison after he tracked down and killed his wife’s murderer. Tiger returns to his hometown in Georgia as he tries to pursue a quiet life and escape from his past violent past which still haunts him. However this is an Italian action film from the 80s so the chances of poor old Tiger getting a moment of peace and quiet are fairly slim. And of course it isn’t long before Tiger must step up to restore order when he gets cruelly taunted and threatened by a group of deer poaches, led by an old acquaintance Tom, (played by the great George Eastman) who are employed by a rich businessman from Hong Kong, who is using the deer’s they maim and kill to make medicine. After shutting down the poaching operation Tiger and his long lost daughter Connie (played by the always wooden Valentina Forte) are brutally attacked by the poachers. Tiger is left with no other option but to deliver blazing justice with his experimental military shotgun in a bloody rampage of vengeance. Loaded with grenades, rockets and shells that will blow the limbs off a poacher at a hundred paces, Tiger once and for all takes out the trash.

This film is a very odd combination of Death Wish and First Blood in that we get both a very strong, if all be it short vengeance plotline, along with a story of a man trying to escape a dark past only to be dragged back into violence because of rednecks who ultimately get more than they bargained for. The First Blood style plot line takes up around two thirds of the film compared to the disappointingly short vengeance plotline. To the point that this could easily be considered as an Italian exploitation response to the Rambo boom of the early 80’s. Treating this as nothing more than Rambo knock off however is to do Blastfighter a bit of a disservice, it stands up fairly well on its own shell case strewn, blood soaked ground as a fun and solid, if slightly drawn out and cheap action effort from one of the masters of Italian exploitation Lamberto Bava.

The films two major problems do set the film back a little however. Firstly, the films puts far too much focus on Tiger and Connie fleeing the poachers, this part of the film really drags and made me care a whole lot less about Connie. This brings me on to the second issue with Blastfighter, Connie. Every time she is on screen the combination of her resting bitchface, shrill voice and whiny dialogue and demeanour leaves me wanting to take Tigers shotgun and swiftly remove her appalling character from this film. 

Leaving aside this two issues the film has many strong points. Michael Sopkiw is superb as the troubled Tiger, although his dubbing is typically poor his acting is surprisingly good. The films action pieces are all very well executed from both a special effects point of view and lighting/cinematography point of view. There is also a nice amount of dismemberment and gore towards the films climax, which is made all the better by the superb synth soundtrack composed by the masterful Fabio Frizzi the whole film is set to. Overall this is very enjoyable watch despite its problems, and considering it is now available on Blu-ray from 88 Films you really don’t have an excuse not to check it out, I’m giving Blastfighter a 6.5/10.