Video Goo Goo: The Annihilators (1985)

Most of the time going back and revisiting those flicks I treasured as a child only turns ugly.  Other times it becomes a pleasant surprise, and I marvel at the good taste I had as a smart, good looking young whippersnapper.  This isn't one of those.  This is the ugly.

It's easy to make fun of this stuff, but it's this brand of trash that made me the well rounded film aficionado I am today.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run to watch a copy of Robowar.

In 1972, a crack commando- oh wait...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088729/

I know what you're saying.  Any movie that starts out with stock footage must be good.  Right?  Not so, you fucking idiot.  Why are you interrupting me, anyway, let me talk about the movie, can't I get in a word edgewise?  Is edgewise one word or two?  How did that phrase come about, anyway?

THE MOVIE:  The Annihilators.  Starring Christopher Stone (The Howling), Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (Welcome Back, Kotter), Paul Koslo (Mr. Majestyk), and the one and only...

Really, an exclamation point should follow this guy's name in any movie.

Yes, Gerritt Graham.  The Gerritt Graham.  This was a pleasant surprise, because I didn't remember this man being in the film.  If I would have remembered this little tidbit, I would have tracked it down years ago.  Oh, also, some other people are in the movie.  There's this one guy who wears glasses, but it's kind of a gyp, because he never does anything interesting with the glasses.  Get this, he only uses them to see with, and I'm all like, why did you even put glasses in the movie?  So stupid.

THE STORY:  We open deep in the jungles of Calif- er, Vietnam.  This crack commando squad (Choose your own A-Team joke!  Come up with something better than B-Team and win my undying love and devotion!), consisting of the Sgt. Bill (Stone), Garrett Floyd (Hilton-Jacobs), Woody (Andy Wood), Ray Track (GERRITT GRAHAM!), and...

Jerry Mathers, as the Beaver*

The team is sent on a mission by a mysterious operator that goes by the code name of Popeye.  They must use their crack skills to blow some shit up.  Apparently it's a munitions dump that the Viet Cong have strategically placed in a wide open clearing in this dense jungle that is definitely not a wooded area in Anytown, U.S.A.  Everything goes as planned until it doesn't.  Stuff blows up, but the Viet Cong are closing in, and Jerry Mathers takes a bullet.  Surely this is where we'll see the team rescuing their fallen brother and making a harrowing escape, right?  Wrong.  Cut to:

This morning show was never the same after the firing of Tootsie Buttons.

The Beav is now cripp- handicapable.  He and his pop run a rinky dink little convenience store.  When the NOW story starts, they are apparently having a small business owner's neighborhood meeting in this poor excuse for a store.  Seriously, I didn't even see any bath salts or Bang Bang on sale, let alone the crack kits you can get at the finer establishments.  Where's the entrepreneurial spirit?  These business owners are having fits because a gang of ruffians in the area are causing problems.  Of course, Jerry Mathers doesn't want to examine the hard issues such as why these ruffians are doing Bad Things, probably due to economic disparity between the classes and the cancelling of Star Trek too early.  It's complicated.  No, he wants to, get this, stand up to the ruffians.  I'm only half sorry for typing that about a handicapable person.

Soon the fun little get together disperses, and Jerry Mathers sends his pop out for either a gun or a sandwich, I'm a little fuzzy on the particulars, as I was getting very hungry at the time.  Maybe it was a gun and a sandwich.  Wouldn't you know it, this is the exact time Paul Koslo shows up with his gang.  I don't think the gang has a name, they're probably too cool for that sort of thing, and would just sit around and make fun of other gangs that named themselves.  They probably already get a lot of mileage out of the fact that they have to contend with The Annihilators.  Koslo goes by the name of Roy Boy, though.  After an almost rape of a lone female customer in the store, which turns out to just be a simple murder, no one is raped thank God, Roy Boy murders The Beav with a meat tenderizer.

Bliss.

This is where I skip ahead.  You know the basics, right?  Funeral, Sgt. Bill attends the funeral, Beaver's dad calls out Sarge, tells him he's a little bitch if he doesn't avenge his fallen brother.  Sarge cries for a bit, wondering if he really is a bitch.  After several soul searching sessions with Dr. Pamela Gunderson, PSYD, he decides he doesn't want to be a bitch.  Sarge, as played by Stone who looks like a cross between a really bloated Charles Bronson and a Thundercat, calls in an old favor from fixer and all around great guy, Popeye.  Soon, the Annihilators are assembling.   Gerritt Graham's Ray decides to leave his job as an accountant to become an Annihilator full time.  This may sound like an awesome thing to do, but I've tried Annihilating even on a part time basis, and there's just no future at all.  Really unwise career move.  They're even provided a headquarters, which is cool.  The only catch is they have to give lessons in Annihilating to the townsfolk, which is not cool.  Such gems are passed on like Gerritt Graham's lesson in Sharp things are Sharp.  Then we have Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs teaching martial arts to all those who were stupid enough to sign up for martial arts classes taught by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs.  I really hate typing that hyphen.

In today's episode of The Annihilators, the role of Steve James will be played by Lawrence Hyphen Jacobs

Nothing really interesting happens for the next two and a half hours.  The character of Woody reveals his alcohol problem in an unprompted speech about his boo fucking hoo problems after the war.  Actually, he starts to shape up as the only interesting character, and I mean that relative to the proceedings.  I forgot to mention when the guys find him, he is living in an old abandoned bus.  This might sound cool at first, but then it's revealed that he only gets DirecTV, which really sucks.   He is also given a sort of romantic subplot and has a scene where he is reciting an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem in an alley with a bag lady.  Wait, I have to mention this bag lady.  She witnessed the murder of Roller Beav, but said nothing.  Even though the townspeople are very aware of who killed Beav, they also say nothing.  They leave the Annihilators hanging.  What a bunch of assholes.  Maybe they don't deserve the Annihilators.  The bag lady, as a reward for Woody saving her from ruffians who were accosting her tells Woody that Roy Boy killed the Beav.  I don't know why they were accosting her.   I don't know about you, but the bag ladies I've come upon usually have absolutely nothing of any value.  They are a rapey bunch of ruffians, but eww.   This is the impetus for the third act, and also the end of Woody's sort of interesting stuff.

Not David Bowie's finest hour

Look, I'm not really clear on what exactly is the evil gang's bread and butter.  Something about running dope.  They also are apparently in the loan shark game, even though they dress like bums and hang out in a real shit hole.  They can afford coke, though.  You know Roy Boy is bad because he is shown snorting a line of cocainum.  They obviously need annihilated.

This is where it gets good, right?  Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?  Zzzz.  I should leave it at that.  Move along, nothing to see here.  Hyphen Jacobs doesn't deserve to wear the headband of Steve James.  In fact, he doesn't even deserve to say the names 'Steve' or 'James' at any time in his life.  He's really kind of a pussy.  In the first bit of supposed Annihilating we get, Hyphen Jacobs gets his ass handed to him by just two guys.  It's fucking sad.  Then he takes it out on Woody because the Woodman smells like booze.  It's all a misunderstanding, though, because Woody only smells like booze because he's been drinking.  Also getting shot at by a dude with a shotgun, which is more than we can say for Hyphen Jacobs pitiful attempt to fend off two guys with clubs.  Pathetic. 

Turns out Sgt. Bill was not along for this little excursion, because he had one more appointment with Dr. Gunderson.  He's kind of pissed that the team went off all half cocked without a plan.  Sarge tells them how they need a plan to succeed.  At this point one of them replies, "Just like Vietnam?"  I don't think this was intended as biting commentary, because their plan sort of works, and is not just one giant misguided clusterfuck.

Did I mention any similarities to the A-Team?

The Annihilators end up hijacking a truck full of heroin that has some tenuous connection to Roy Boy and his pack of hooligans.  This sets up the final Annihilation.  At this point, who really cares?  It's not a good movie, folks.  I've had more enjoyment writing this than I had during the entire running time.  I don't think I can handle the rest of the quadrilogy.  Although Annihilators 4: The Comfortable Couch is a welcome departure from the normal formula.  It's really very 'meta'.  Is that still a thing?  Do I sound smart when I use that word? 


THE ACTION:  It sucks.  At one point I was reminded of a superior movie, though.

Scorpio called, he wants his gimmick back

WAIT!  IF YOU'RE STILL HERE, KEEP READING!  THIS IS WHERE I ALMOST SAY SOMETHING INTERESTING!

Contrary to popular belief, this film did have a director.  Charles E. Sellier, Jr. who, just a year before this turd, gave the world Silent Night, Deadly Night.

This movie really does seem like it did come about as the result of a few people sitting around watching The A-Team and wondering what it would be like if the average episode of the A-Team was slightly more violent and was made for half the budget.  I suppose there is novelty in the setting.  Most of these 80's cleaning up the streets flicks are set in New York, or L.A., and most would have the unsuspecting Midwesterner believe that every major metropolitan city was a nightmare scenario.   The novelty this time is that the action is set in Atlanta, or about three blocks somewhere in Atlanta, perhaps. 

I'm sure there's a thesis out there somewhere written about the 80's obsession with Vietnam vet heroes, perhaps something meaningful about
redemption and rehabilitation in the public eye.  I'm more apt to talk about guys being beat to death with meat tenderizers.  Truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  While the Vietnam conflict definitely affected the national psyche and the minds of countless filmmakers, the fact remains that Vietnam vet was this particular era's shorthand for
badass, no explanation necessary.  It's done all the time today with the special forces, black ops tag.  Drop a line or two about mysterious, shadowy past, and ouila, you have every Steven Seagal movie ever made. 

I wonder if we'll get to the point where Iraq/Afghanistan vets will be the heroes of every other DTV action flick, or are we at a point where
that is considered taboo?  America is certainly desensitized to screen violence to a huge degree, certainly owing to the images of the Vietnam war
that were broadcast every night across television screens during that tumultuous time.  Oddly enough, and I don't know if this qualifies as irony, we're probably also at a place where using veterans of the
'War on Terror' as protagonists of cheap action fare would seem terribly Un PC.

Okay, I'll shut up now

*Not really Jerry Mathers.  This role was actually played by David Faustino.