Jungle Warriors (1984)

While filming a photo shoot in the jungles of Central America, an airplane carrying the producer and several fashion models is shot down and they are subsequently forced to travel on foot in order to escape the vicious drug dealers who are after them. Unfortunately, the producer named "Larry Schecter" (Marjoe Gortner) is soon killed and they are all taken captive and led back to the jungle mansion where the sadistic drug warlord named "Cesar Santiago" (Paul L. Smith) is anxiously awaiting them. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film had some potential but the weak acting and rather meandering plot greatly affected the movie as a whole. However, for what it's worth, I thought the presence of Suzi Horne (as "Pam Ross"), Mindi Iden ("Marci") and to a lesser extent Nina van Pallandt ("Joanna Quinn") brightened the scenery to a certain degree--but that still wasn't enough to overcome the general lack of intensity and passion shown in this film. Because of that I have rated this movie accordingly. Slightly below average.

A pretty irritating guy named Larry (Gortner) is in charge of corralling a bunch of models and flying them down to an unnamed South or Central American country (the movie itself was shot in Mexico). They inadvertently land in the thick jungles of drug-smuggling country. This particular gang of drug lords is commanded by Santiago (Smith) and his sister Angel (Danning). They have a team of thugs led by Luther (Strode). It's not looking good for the models, and making things even worse is that a mobster named Vito Mastranga (Vernon) and his associate Nick Spilotro (Cord) are collaborating with Santiago and Angel and are in negotiations for future highly illegal doings. With no prior combat training, the models are going to have to take up arms against their captors if they ever want to strut on the catwalk ever again. Will they be able to pull off this daring feat? You'd think - you'd REALLY think - that a movie about a bunch of models who get together and have to shoot a bunch of guns to escape the jungle and get back at the baddies would be a surefire formula for cinematic greatness. Or at least entertainment. Somehow Jungle Warriors manages to fumble this potential home run, to use a spot-on sports analogy. Lamely, the movie is talky, boring, slow, lacks action, and the worst crime of all is that it's not exploitative enough. To compare it to something, Raw Force (1982) is better, and Jungle Warriors kind of falls into that video store shelf-filler netherworld inhabited by the likes of other similarly-themed mediocre flicks like Savage Justice (1988) and Sweet Revenge (1987). Though to be fair and balanced, it is better than Mercenary II (1999).Perhaps you even saw this or the aforementioned titles collecting dust on the shelf of your local video store. Sybil Danning's face couldn't be much bigger on the U.S. VHS box art (as was the case with her "Adventure Video" series), but she is painfully underused in the movie itself. Another quite easy thing the movie could have done to improve itself would have been to include more Danning. Actually, pretty much the entire cast gets the short end of the stick somehow. Woody Strode says nothing, Danning is barely there, Paul L. Smith has no facial hair and does minimal fighting, John Vernon is in a veritable sit-down role, Alex Cord does what he can, and only Marjoe Gortner adds some Woody Allen-like spice to this mush. The models don't seem to have individual personalities.It's a plot we've all seen many times before, and they saved all the supposed action for the climax. Some pew-pew machine gun shooting and maybe an exploding helicopter at the last minute doesn't make up for all the waterfall footage we'd seen for the previous eighty or so minutes. But on the plus side, 80's buffs will be delighted to see a vicious-looking drug goon wearing an E.T. shirt, and a too-brief glimpse of the wardrobe girl on the fashion shoot who has a sideways ponytail and is listening to a Walkman with orange ear covers. She should have gotten her own movie, she was the best character. The whole thing tops off with a theme song featuring the aggressively abrasive, Lene Lovich-like vocals of one Marina Arcangeli. So it all ends on a bad note, literally.Jungle Warriors is unfortunately lackluster, and it should have been called, if we may borrow a phrase from ourselves, Jungle Slog.

A group of gorgeous models doing a photo shoot in South America run afoul of ruthless drug lord Cesar Santiago (hulking Paul Smith in excellent smoothly villainous form). However, the gals manage to acquire some heavy duty firepower and make a fierce stand against their cruel and vile captors. Director Ernst R. von Theumer, who also co-wrote the cheerfully crass script with Robert Collector, relates the entertainingly trashy story at a brisk pace, maintains a blithely lurid tone throughout, stages the last reel outburst of stirring action with real rip-roaring gusto, delivers a handy helping of bloody violence and raw brutality, and further spices things up with a tasty smattering of gratuitous female nudity. The choice cast of veteran exploitation cinema regulars have a ball with the winningly low-grade material: Statuesque blonde goddess Sybil Danning vamps it up deliciously as Santiago's sadistic lesbian sister Angel, John Vernon really sinks his teeth into his meaty role as jolly and easygoing mobster Vito Mastranga, Margoe Gortner frets up an obnoxious storm as whiny and irritating modeling agency producer Larry Schecter, Woody Strode projects considerable charm and authority as Santiago's formidable right-hand man Luther, and Alex Cord does well as Mastranga's antsy and slimy attorney partner Nick Spilotro. Moreover, Dana Eclar is a hoot as excitable fed D'Antoni and the always delightful Louisa Moritz has a regrettably minor part as sweetly ditsy make-up artist Laura McCashin. Nicholas Josef von Sternberg's glossy cinematography gives the picture an impressively slick look. Roland Baumgarter's rousing score hits the right-on rocking spot. The theme song is hilariously awful. A total schlocky blast.

I like jungle movies. Usually some people are cast away in the virgin forest and have to find their way out of it – often they are very ill equipped, wear a nightgown (see Ann Sheridan in Jacques Tourneur's Appointment in Honduras) or high heels, like in this flick. The story is very simple, but effective. Some babes and another team of bad dudes have appointments in an exotic country, the first for a shooting session with a fashion photographer, the second for some drug trade. The groups meet and clash and there is a lot of barrel melting gun action.As I said, it works and delivers good and insightful entertainment. I found the cast very interesting. There are some good character actors. Marjoe Gortner (Earthquake, The Nelson Marcus Murders-Kojak pilot) plays the fashion photographer as an overexcited, bossy, fussy mother hen, it looks like he thinks it is the biggest part of his career. Don Siegel regular John Vernon (was also Cuban thug in Hitchcock's Topaz) is the Mafioso who doesn't seem to have a worry in the world although the whole atmosphere is very tense. He is always laughing without any apparent reason (I suspect he was drunk during the whole shoot). Woody Stroude appears too, as a mixture of guerrilla and bodyguard. He seems to have a good time and displays much unexpected charm.That's not all. The movie also boasts two iconic female leads: Nina Van Pallandt (Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye) is the leader of the fashion shooting crew. She gets a lot of screen time and is surprisingly effective in a role that would have been tailor made for Pam Grier. Muscular, wispy haired sex symbol Sybil Danning (kind of Austrian women's answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger) plays the sister of the drug lord (a Broderick Crawford lookalike, is also good and convincing).MINOR SPOILER The story goes as those stories go. There is a good climactic scene towards the end: The drug lord and his entourage have dinner with the mafioso and his team on an open air terrace under the trees. Everybody is friendly, but it's clear that they all distrust each other. At the same time the captured babes manage to free themselves inside the drug lord's palace, of which the party is not aware. The women try to get away, they shoot at a guard. As soon as it rings out, hell breaks loose on the terrace, everybody overturning tables and reaching for a firearm. It's really well done.A last word about the location. Almost all of the action takes place in the drug lord's castle, an old, venerable, architectonically interesting Mexican fortress that is put to good use by the film makers. I could bet on it they used exactly the same place for the Harrison Ford starrer Clear and Present Danger (as a Colombian drug lord's lair).