When three prisoners escape from a prison van when it crashes, they begin a deadly cross-country crime spree before hiding out in a remote house belonging to a black minister and his family. The self-appointed 'leader' of the gang Jessie Lee Kane (William Sanderson) is full of racial hate and aggression and begins a sadistic tirade against the poor family. With the police on their trail, they must decide their next step, or if they should hold out where they are and enjoy themselves while they can. The minister Ted Turner (Robert Judd) is a reserved and proud man, willing to do anything to protect his family, and is gradually being pushed further and further over the edge by the increasingly violent threesome.
Listed as one of the notorious 'video nasties' back in 1984, it is the only film to be banned based solely on the language used. After watching the film, it's not difficult to see why. Don't get me wrong, I think censorship is just a scapegoat for problems on a larger scale and the films on the video nasty list were mainly hilarious anyway, but the amount of racial slurs bounded about in the film is just offensive and wholly unnecessary. This is not a racist film by any means - if anything it falls into the traditions of the blaxploitation genre - but in one scene the 'n' word must be used by the same person about fifty times in the space of a couple of minutes. Okay, we get it, Kane is a racist scumbag, we don't have to hear it in every sentence.It's unfortunate, as the film has some good moments, and its production value seems to be evidently better than the majority of Grindhouse films at the time. Sanderson convinces in the lead role, and would go on to star as J.F. Sebastian the toy-maker in Blade Runner (1982), and appeared in HBO's Deadwood and True Blood. The film just unfortunately revels in its violence and racial abuse. Only worth seeing for the scene where a wheelchair-bound grandma points a gun and shouts "don't move, or I'll blow your motherfuckin' balls off!"
Directed by: Robert A. Endelson
Country: USA
Rating: **
Tom Gillespie
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