Sometimes if you root around long enough in the bargain bin you’ll fish out a keeper like Fleshburn (1983, 89 minutes). This gritty tale comes from the ruthless mind of Death Wish scribe Brian Garfield. Starring as this incarnation of a seriously revenge-minded fella is Sonny Landham who would later become Predator‘s Mr. "We’re ALL Gonna Die."
The movie: Calvin Duggai (Landham) is an indian Vietnam vet who busts himself out of the looney bin and heads out on the warpath after the four know-it-all shrinks who sent him there. He clunks each one over the head, tosses them in his truck, and roars down a dirt road deep into the desert on a wilderness vacation they will certainly never forget, and may never survive. After smacking these palefaces around and generally scaring the bejesus out of them, he leaves them there to roast in the sun, but warns them he’ll kill them if they try to escape. With no food, no water, no shelter and NO SHOES the Eagle Scout of this pity party, and our hero, James Brody (Robert Alan Browne) has everyone burrow into the dirt like prairie dogs to beat the heat. Meanwhile, up on the ridge, Duggai keeps a watchful eye on his prey, that is when he’s not screaming like a banshee, contorting himself in weird witch doctor jigs, or communing with his coyote carcass. But like any good cat-and-mouse story, the mice gotta wander for freedom and create suspense as we all wonder when they’re gonna get pounced on.
Regardless of how transparent and manipulative that is the flick still thrills. In fact, it even seems a bit kin to The Hills Have Eyes, which also features city folks at odds with the desert and one or more psychopathic yahoos. CineSchlockers will remember Karen Carlson (as Shirley) from her cantastic performance in The Student Nurses — the first film Roger Corman produced for his fledgling New World Pictures.
Notables: No breasts. Two corpses. Multiple explosions. Broken-leg setting. Critter role call: One dead deer. Two dead bunnies. One lizard. Scorpion flinging. One tarantula. Rattler wrestling. Dive-bombing hawk.
Quotables: Duggai coldly explains why he’s about to re-enact the Battle of Little Big Horn, "What I did was a matter for a tribal council, not a white man’s court! You sent me to that hospital where those turkey buzzards picked at my soul like I was a lizard. I had my hell, now you’re gonna have yours!" Shirley sets back the cause of feminism, "Will you please hold me? I need your strength." Brody emotes, "YOU RANCID BASTARD SON OF A BITCH!!!"
Time codes: Duggai gloms on the war paint (29:20). A hawk screeches down and claws the hide off Brody (44:30). Ms. Carlson wigs out (54:45). A bit of light bondage never hurt nobody (1:12:00).
Final thought: Great flick and a swell reminder to keep rummaging through those discount titles.