Rolling Vengeance (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Nov 11, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Steven Hilliard SternRelease Date(s)
1987 (September 10, 2024)Studio(s)
Apollo Pictures/Manson International Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B
Review
A vigilante thriller amusingly incorporating a monster truck (Blu-ray! Blu-ray! Blu-ray!), Rolling Vengeance (1987) may be utterly ridiculous—with plot holes big enough to drive a monster truck through—but as an exploitation film for audiences attracted to such movies, it delivers the goods. Set in Ohio but filmed on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario, the film has a peculiarly Canadian approach, with its clean-cut hero and family, bad guys who are almost like cartoon characters, and when the film is obligated to deliver its quotient of sleaze, it does so in a kind of good-natured, slightly embarrassed manner. Violent deaths are virtually bloodless, and during car and truck chases vehicles rarely seem to be going faster than 20 miles per hour.
Big Joe Rosso (Lawrence Dane) operates a modest truck-driving business with his son, Joey (Don Michael Paul). They enjoy a warm, father-son relationship, living wholesomely with Big Joe’s wife, Kathy (Susan Hogan), and their two daughters, Allison and Kristin.
Unfortunately, they’re forced to do business with Arkansan Tiny Doyle (Ned Beatty), who operates a strip club, bar, and used car dealership with his adult sons, all backwoods Deliverance types. One afternoon, the Doyle brothers, drunk as skunks, run Kathy and the two daughters off the road, the meanest of the good ol’ boys, Vic (Todd Dickworth), sexually assaulting Kathy, who peels off at 20 miles per hour, the drunken Doyle boys giving slow-speed chase, resulting in Kathy’s car hit head-on by innocent trucker Steve Tyler (Barclay Hope). Kathy and the girls are killed instantly yet, somehow, the boys get off with just a $300 fine and probation, sneering and laughing at the distraught Big Joe and Joey on their way out of the courtroom.
Unrepentant, the smashed brothers (given screen names like “Hairlip” and “Moon Man”) next drop a mess of cinderblocks from an overpass, critically injuring Big Joe and destroying his rig. Joey decides to take matters into his own hands by building a monster truck out of spare parts in his barn, an impenetrable tank-like cab sitting atop four humongous tires.
One thing that works in Rolling Vengeance’s favor is that, as vigilante movies go, it is almost charmingly naïve; it’s like The Blob (1958) of vigilante movies. When Joey and his girlfriend, Misty (Lisa Howard), make out in a rig, he doesn’t press for sex but tells her “I love you” instead. In sharp contrast to graphic rape and murder of women in the Death Wish movies, Vic’s assault on Big Joe’s wife is limited to a sloppy kiss through the car window. This is a Canadian production, eh? And even though heads are crushed like melons under the monster truck’s 12-foot wheels, they don’t spectacularly explode like the head-busting Scanners. At Tiny’s strip club the movie audience sees a fleeting exposed breast or two, but it’s all, well, tasteful. My guess is the film’s profanity, rather than its mild violence and brief nudity, ensured its “R” rating.
Logically, the film is absurd. When the brothers drop all those cinder blocks on the (slow-moving) cars and trucks below, there’s never any mention of a police investigation. When Joey begins picking off the brothers one-by-one (in reverse order of their status, of course), you’d think the police would immediately peg Joey as their incredibly obvious prime suspect, but only sympathetic police Sgt. Sly Sullivan (Michael J. Reynolds, in a good performance) is on to him. His is a part similar to, if much less abrasive, Vincent Gardenia’s in Death Wish. The story’s resolution makes no sense, either, and suggests some last-minute changes to the script.
The mostly-Canadian cast ranges from acceptable to very good, particularly Reynolds and Lawrence Dane. But what’s poor Ned Beatty doing here? Missing a prominent tooth, his hair styled into a ridiculous pompadour and wearing a strange black leather jacket that suggests a hand-me-down from General Zod, the poor man looks ridiculous. Beatty quickly became one of cinema’s great supporting actors through his performances in great films like Deliverance and Network, in big commercial movies like Silver Streak and the Superman movies, and in classy TV efforts like Friendly Fire. By 1987, however, though his career was busier than ever, most of his appearances were in very lesser films like these. The same sort of thing happened to Charles Durning, who probably more than once was up for the same role as Beatty. In Durning’s case, he seems to have been someone who simply liked working all the time, no matter the quality of the film or TV show. Maybe that was true of Beatty also.
Kino’s Blu-ray! Blu-ray! Blu-ray! of Rolling Vengeance, licensed from MGM (inheritors of the Manson library), is excellent, the 1.85:1 widescreen image looking clean and sharp, with accurate color and contrast. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also fine, and supported by optional English subtitles. The disc itself is Region “A” encoded.
Extras consist of a new audio commentary by Paul Corupe of Canuxploitation.com and film historian Jason Pichonsky. Better is a warm interview, just under 10 minutes, with busy Canadian actor Lawrence Dane, who died in 2022. A trailer is also included.
Viewed in the right frame of mind, Rolling Vengeance is pretty entertaining for what it is, good for a Drive-In Movie Night at home.
- Stuart Galbraith IV