BY TODD GARBARINI
One
of the most frustrating things that I find true of lackluster movies is that
following the passage of time, usually several decades, a film that was
initially, and often rightfully, considered a stinker is then later touted as
“the original classic!†Generally, these accolades are tied-in with advertising
to promote and ultimately sell product and give the uninitiated and the curious
a reason to buy the film sight-unseen. Efren C. Piñon’s Blind Rage
(1976) isn’t necessarily a bad film, it just isn’t a particularly good one. Despite
its 82-minute running time, the film feels twice as long and that’s never a
good sign.
Blind
Rage is a good example of an interesting
premise executed in a fashion that can best be described as pedestrian. A
product of 1970’s “chopsocky†cinema, the opening credits play over the vocals
of Helen Gamboa singing the title track, “The Systemâ€, the film’s original title when it
was released in the Philippines in October 1976. The song sounds like a cross
between the instrumental strains of The Bermuda Depths’s (1978) title
song “Jennie†and the vocals of Shirley Bassey’s tune for the James Bond film Moonraker
(1979). Johnny Duran (Charlie Davao, a Philippine actor with just over 250
titles to his credit) of the Oriental Bank makes his way over the Vincent
Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, CA and meets with several officials representing
the U.S. Treasury Department and chairman of the project Southeast Asia, the
Dept. of Foreign Affairs, the Secret Service, and a member of the CIA who looks
like the "Dodgson! Dodgson! We've got Dodgson here!" guy in Jurassic
Park (1993) with his tourist hat. They discuss the transfer of $15M
earmarked by the federal government to prevent countries surrounding Vietnam
from falling the way that South Vietnam did to the North. Unfortunately for
them, some bad guys are looking to get their hands on the loot and before you
can say “The International House of Pancakesâ€, Duran is followed and approached
by Lew Simpson (B.T. Anderson in his only screen credit if you believe the IMDB)
with $250K in cash in a briefcase. It’s Simpson’s hope that Duran will agree to
help him commandeer the $15M for he and his bosses. It isn’t long before Duran
phones Simpson the next day to accept the offer. They meet at the foot of 62nd Street
in front of the Bay Yacht Club which is less than five miles from the Palace
Theatre in Long Beach, CA where this film opened on Wednesday, March 7, 1979
for a brief engagement under its alternate and better known American title.
Duran
senses a catch and his intuition proves right: he must recruit and train four
blind men to pull off the bank heist! These men have all suffered a terrible
fate that has led to their lack of sight, which the viewers get to see in all
its glory: Willie Black (D'Urville Martin), a former mobster blinded by the
Syndicate after foolishly cheating them out of money; Lin Wang (Leo Fong), a
“liquidator†for a gang and double-crossed hoodlums on an opium deal; Hector
Lopez (Darnell Garcia), a matador who was gored in the eyes by a bull (I kid
you not); and Amazing Anderson (Dick Adair), a magician who was born blind (I
cannot even fathom how that works). A fifth blind man (Ben Guevara) is included
to disable the bank’s alarm system. Sally (Leila Hermosa, whose last name in
Spanish means “beautiful,†a fitting adjective) is recruited to train the blind
men and takes them through a mock robbery, putting them through the right
number of paces and utilizing their acute hearing to guide them through the
whole affair in a makeshift “bank†complete with the exact layout of the real
one with “dummies†to sit in for tellers. Their sense of smell is heightened as
well. Sally’s perfume is noticed by one of the men who tries to have his way
with her one night while another comes to her rescue, calling the brute a “sex-hungry
bastard.†It’s this sort of ludicrous dialog and bad dubbing that usually makes
such films a riot to watch. When the bank robbery goes down for real, it’s
quite something to see until the action goes south and a walking stick is left
behind, behooving the police to catch them. With ten minutes left in the film, Fred
Williamson finally shows up to snarl the bad guys!
I’ve
seen a good share of robbery films, my favorites being Rififi (1955), The
Killing (1956), The Hot Rock (1972), Return of the Pink Panther
(1975) and the quintessential bank robbery film Dog Day Afternoon
(1975). Reservoir Dogs (1992) concerned itself more from the standpoint
of the fallout following the robbery, as did The Killing, but The
System/Blind Rage moves at such a snail’s pace that it doesn’t
really get going until the final reel. What’s more, there is an overall lack of
suspense as most of the film is shot in masters with little intercutting. Most
of the acting is stiff, with the performers going through the motions as though
they were doing a dress rehearsal following a table read. The immediacy and
tension that one would expect to find in a film of this sort is completely absent.
I would have loved to have seen this done as a comedy in the hands of Woody
Allen whose Take the Money and Run (1969), which features a bank
robbery, is still laugh-out-loud funny.
The
film is similar in theme to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear
(1953) and William Friedkin’s remake Sorcerer (1977) in which social
outcasts are recruited for a common and dangerous purpose all the while
intimating that they are expendable.
The
new Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing is derived from a theatrical print and
shows some wear and tear and some scratches, but they are all very minor. Reel
change cue marks are gone and there is some grain, but the film in high
definition looks better than it ever has on home video.
The
disc comes with and interview with actor Fred Williamson that runs just over
six minutes and an interview with Leo Fong that runs just over ten minutes. The
trailers section includes: Blind Rage with Dutch subtitles; Death
Warrant (1990) with the score to 1985’s Lifeforce over the audio; Lone
Wolf McQuade (1983); Record City (1978); and 3:15 (1986) wherein
a huge expletive is surprisingly dropped!
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