Monte Hellman interviews

Monte Hellman with Andrew Leavold at Monte's Laurel Canyon residence, May 2008

From the Monte Hellman interview with Steve Voce, Psychotronic Video Magazine #25 (1997), p.78

BACK DOOR TO HELL and FLIGHT TO FURY, shot back to back in The Philippines, were Hellman's next as director. BACK DOOR, a WWII story with Filipino freedom fighters, stars singer Jimmy Rogers, Jack Nicholson and John Hackett. Nicholson gets drunk, worries a lot and is shot. 20th Century Fox released the Lippert production. FLIGHT (written by Nicholson) was released by Feature Film Corp. (they also released CYBORG 2087 and DIMENSION 5). It stars Dewey Martin, Fay Spain, Nicholson (with a mustache) as a psychotic diamond smuggler (who eventually kills himself) and Vic Diaz (also in many Filipino horror movies). The settings in the jungle after a plain crash.

"Well that was after doing all the little pieces for Roger. But I got BACK DOOR TO HELL and FLIGHT TO FURY because (producer) Fred Ross saw THE TERROR in Hong Kong and knew that Francis and I each worked on it and didn't know who did what. He was working for a man named Robert Lippert, and Lippert cabled to him that he wanted either Francis or me to direct these two films after they couldn't find Francis, and I like to say, had he gone the other way, he might have become rich and famous.

“It was really terrific because we were off in the middle of, well we were halfway around the world, and we could kind of do what we wanted, because there was nobody there to supervise it other than Fred who was on our side. So we wrote, literally on the way to the Philippines, we were on a boat and a ship, and Jack wrote one script and John Hackett wrote the other. When we got to the Phillipines and immediately started preproduction casting and scouting locations and within a few weeks we were shooting. So nobody even saw anything including the script until we were finished with the first picture. And then by the time we finished, they kind of freaked out over some of the stuff, and they took BACK DOOR TO HELL, and added this stock footage to the end, and made it look like this gun-ho pro-war movie, which is not exactly what it was.”

"Trapped Ashes: Director Monte Hellman by Jonathan Doyle" on the Bloody Disgusting website:

BD: One last thing I want to ask you about because I know no Monte Hellman interview is complete without asking. I just saw "Back Door to Hell" recently when that was released on DVD for the first time and I was wondering if you could talk about Jack Nicholson and the collaboration you had over the years and whether you still correspond with him to this day.

MH: Jack and I are still good friends and that particular film was very interesting because, during the shooting of that film, Jack had one of those revelations that people have in their life. I think we were like a third of the way through the shooting and he said, "I think I get it. I think I know what it's about now."

BD: The film or acting in general?

MH: Acting. Something just clicked in his head and he said "I get it" and he just had a transformation as an actor during the shooting of that film. And I have to say, of all my films, that was one of my least favorite because it was very difficult. We had to shoot two films back-to-back and I became deathly ill between the two pictures. I had some rare tropical disease, which they never identified, so I was in the hospital for 3 weeks instead of being in the cutting room and that was the first picture that I didn't actually put into a rough cut myself. So what happened with the second picture is I would shoot all day then take a little nap when I came home and then go to the cutting room at nine until two in the morning and try to recut the picture to get it back into shape. I never felt that it was right because I feel that the first cut is really essential and normally under conditions like that, where somebody else does the first cut, I usually don't even look at it. I go in and I just do it all over again and there, I didn't have that opportunity. And so I kind of never really liked the movie. And seeing it on DVD, it kind of came back. And so it's like a lost child that I've welcomed back.

From MONTE HELLMAN INTERVIEW: EXPLOITATION OR EXISTENTIALISM? by Ron Wells (2000-11-07) on the Film Threat website:

Ron: How did the two films shot in the Philippines, "Back Door to Hell" and "Flight to Fury" come together?

Monte: It came out of the fact Fred Roos was in the Philippines and Hong Kong and he saw "The Terror" and knew that Francis Ford Coppola and I had both worked on it but didn't know who did what. He sent a cable to his boss saying there are these two young directors who worked on this movie I just saw and I thought the work was interesting and I think either one of them would be fine to do these movies. They couldn't find Coppola so they called me.

Ron: Well, you probably had a much easier time in the South Pacific than Coppola did.

Monte: I wouldn't say that. I don't think it's ever easy to film in the Philippines. There's very little you can depend on in any movie shoot, but there it's carried to the extreme. You never knew what you were going to have on any given day. On the first day of shooting on "Back Door to Hell", which we shot first, there was no film.

Ron: What kind of working relationship did you have with Jack Nicholson?

Monte: Before we went to the Philippines, Jack and I had formed a writing partnership. We had been working on a script called "Epitaph" which was kind of autobiographical from Jack's point of view. Roger had agreed to finance it. It was the story of a guy who's a young actor in Hollywood. The idea was to use a lot of clips, because Jack had done dozens of TV things, and little parts in movies, and we though it would be great to have a story about a young actor and actually have clips from all of his movies interspersed. The story is about this guy who's girlfriend is pregnant and he's trying to find $300 to fund an abortion. He's got three days to raise the money. Roger had agreed to finance that. Then we went off and did the movies in the Philippines and when we got back, Roger said, "You know, I've changed my mind. I think it's just too European. No American audience is going to see a movie about abortion."

Back Door To Hell (1964)

1964 – Back Door To Hell (Lippert Inc/Medallion Films Inc)

[distributed in the US by 20th Century Fox]

Director Monte Hellman Story Richard A. Guttman Screenplay Richard A. Guttman, John Hackett Producer Fred Roos Executive Producer [uncredited] Robert L. Lippert Associate Producer Ronald Remy Music Mike Velarde Cinematography Mars Rasca Production Manager Nilo Saez Editors Fely Crisostomo, [uncredited] Monte Hellman Sound Juanito Clemente Makeup Nita Sol Cruz Camera Operator Ricardo Remias Production Assistant Walter Phelps

Cast Jimmie Rodgers (Lt. Craig), Jack Nicholson (Burnett), John Hackett (Jersey), Annabelle Huggins (Maria), Conrad Maga (Paco), Johnny Monteiro (Ramundo), Joe Sison (Japanese Captain), Henry Duval (Garde), Ben Perez, Vic Uematsu

Review by Andrew Leavold

By the time Jack Nicholson appeared in two movies shot back-to-back in the Philippines in 1964 by maverick director Monte Hellman, he was already an aspiring writer, not to mention hungry actor, and had collaborated with Hellman a number of times. Most notable was the notorious Roger Corman quickie The Terror (1963) on which a total of five directors worked, with only Corman receiving credit. Executive Producer Robert Lippert had seen The Terror and, stunned by its sheer economy but completely in the dark over which filmmaker did what, asked for either Francis Ford Coppola or Monte Hellman to make his next two pictures in South East Asia. Coppola was busy, so Hellman got the ticket; he took a slow boat to Manila alongside a busy Jack Nicholson who was hammering out the script for Flight To Fury, and John Hackett attempting to nail the second feature Back Door To Hell. Of course Coppola would end up in the Philippines recreating a small corner of hell with Apocalypse Now, but that’s another story altogether…

Under the watchful eye of Lippert’s producer Fred Roos, Hellman shot both films starting with Back Door To Hell with, predictably, very little money, a back-breaking schedule and the inherent chaos of the Philippines to contend with. Not surprisingly Hellman fell deathly ill with an unnamed tropical malady and was unable to supervise the first cut of Back Door… while almost dying daily on the set of Flight To Fury. As a result, Hellman has little to say about his low-rent Philippines adventures, but it does explain the grit, grime and purposeful nihilism in every frame. Add Nicholson’s memorable dialogue and a growing awareness of his strengths as an actor, and you have two perfect low-budget, almost no-budget, micro-masterpieces.

Back Door To Hell is a taut World War 2 drama with a similar look to the other b&w war films made in the Philippines at the time by Eddie Romero and American B actor George Montgomery. Unlike those films, however, there’s no rousing gung-ho speeches here; it's made clear from the start these men, much like the director himself and Francis Ford Coppola after him, are slowly falling to pieces in the Filipino jungle. In Hellman’s case, the Apocalypse starts RIGHT now.

Hellman doesn’t even waste the credits, plunging straight into the action. Lieutenant Craig (Jimmie Rodgers) is a US Army Intelligence officer leading a small band of troops towards a Japanese radio tower. The mission: broadcast vital information to the invading forces about to recapture the Philippines. Compared to his forceful appearance in Flight To Fury, Jack Nicholson is sorely wasted here as Rodger's second banana playing the sardonic St Burnett, a foil for the relatively soulless killing machine Sgt Jersey (co-writer John Hackett). Naturally as Hellman’s two main writers they get the most meaningful exchanges…

Jersey: "We're all gonna die anyway - tomorrow, next week, 30 years from now.

Did that little thought ever penetrate your thick skull?"

Burnett: "Yeah, once when I was a boy, but naturally I dismissed it as being too

outrageous."

The American guerrillas team up with Paco, an embittered Filipino resistance fighter whose survival insticts lead him to mistrust both sides; tired of sacrificing his men for his liberators, he's introduced as the man who has tortured Rodgers' contact to death, just in case... In fact, torture is Paco’s preferred modus operandi, as evidenced by his treatment of the captured Japanese Captain played by Joe Sison (a well-worn Filipino goon, also in Eddie Romero and George Montgomery exports). "Interrogating a prisoner is like cooking a goose..." says Paco, almost salivating at the prospect.

Stripped of most of its military hardware and pyrotechnics, the film is more a claustrophobic deconstruction of a war film, an exercise in rapid-fire montage filled with simple, cost-effective visuals and quiet flourishes such as an incredible 360 degree pan from the Japanese Captain's point of view, and a modest character study of men pushed to the brink. The tacked-on newsreel footage towards the end showing the liberation of Luzon, inserted against Hellman’s wishes by the distributor to make the film more “war-like”, is gratuitous and unwelcome.

Surprisingly good in his role as Lieutenant Craig is Jimmie Rodgers, the easygoing folk-rock singer (and Back Door…’s co-financier) who had a mildly successful career until a drunken incident with a policeman in 1967 left him with a fractured skull and a legacy of brain-related complications. Hellman himself would eventually recover from his harrowing Philippines experiences and collaborate with Nicholson once again on two westerns, Ride In The Whirlwind and The Shooting, which can only be described as existential". Frankly, the same term can be applied here.

Noel Vera's review from the Critic After Dark blog:

Monty Hellman's Back Door to Hell (1964), about a group of soldiers making a secret landing on Bicolano soil to prepare for MacArthur's coming gives one a chance to compare the filmmaker's camerawork against Filipino masters like Gerardo de Leon when using the same or at least similar landscape; the differences are--well, I don't know. I'm not aware of exact numbers--Hellman's budget couldn't possibly be much larger than that of a standard Hollywood feature's-- but the crispness of sound, smoothness of camera movement and clarity of footage go way beyond even the most expensive all-Filipino production; one wonders if perhaps Hellman simply brought better equipment with him.

Both have their distinctive styles, with Hellman favoring low-angled cameras and carefully interlocking shots that show the soldiers' stealthy progress against the Japanese; de Leon often works with grand gestures, with tiny figures running up some tilted landscape, often as if they were working their way up a Sisyphean incline.

When the action breaks out, both use crisp, precise editing, and standard-issue music to ratchet up (however imperfectly) the tension. Hellman's characters talk in a hardboiled language, however, while de Leon betrays a less updated sensibility by having his characters speak florid dialogue in a stagy, often theatrical manner (though he does have a tendency to position his people the way a Japanese director might in a drama scene--both facing the camera, one standing in a far corner, the other up close and looming). A fascinating gem, an efficient genre piece--one that deals, however briefly, with the issue of death and killing and a man's evolving response to them--and easily the best of the titles mentioned here.

Dennis Schwartz’s review from the Ozus' World Movie Reviews website:

Renown cult director Monte Hellman ("Flight to Fury"/"The Shooting"/"Two Lane Blacktop"), in his first directing effort, does wonders with this wartime adventure story considering he was operating on a shoestring budget and didn't have the bread to shoot extensive battle scenes. The black-and-white film is based on a story by Richard A. Guttman and scripted by Guttman and John Hacket (he also has a leading role as a sergeant called Jersey).

It's set in 1944 in Luzon, Philippines, just prior to the American advance to take back the island from the Japanese. A three-man American commando team from an Intelligence unit led by Lieutenant Craig (Jimmie Rodgers, noted country singer, he financially backed the film along with executive producer Lippert and Fox studio), a hardnosed sergeant called Jersey and a young philosophical wisecracking radioman called Burnett (Jack Nicholson). The three get to their rendezvous point with Filipino guerrilla fighters after losing some men in a Japanese ambush. Instead of being met by Miguel, they are met by brash new leader Paco (Conrad Maga). He says he killed Miguel because you can't trust people during the occupation. The Americans, unsure of the new leader, have no choice but to ask Paco to assist them in their important reconnaissance mission to determine the strength and position of the Japanese forces. The Japanese under the command of an evil captain (Joe Sison), threaten to kill the village children if the guerrillas don't turn over the Americans. This prompts the Americans to team up with the guerrillas and take over the Japanese in a surprise raid. The soldiers then meet on the road a Filipino bandit who trades info about the Japanese positions for the American's radio. But the bandits are not willing to wait around as the Americans check out the info before relaying it, and steal the radio. This prompts the Americans to sneak into a Japanese-held village and have Burnett send the message on a Japanese shortwave radio. When spotted by the Japanese a shootout results, with heavy losses for the Americans and guerrilla fighters.

The film's main strength is the lively banter among the American soldiers. Nicholson ribs the cynical Hackett with the line "You're the kinda guy who'd call Mahatma Gandhi a rabble-rouser." In another exchange Hackett says to Nicholson in the battlefield "We're all gonna die anyway - tomorrow, next week, 30 years from now. Did that little thought ever penetrate your thick skull?" Nicholson replies "Yeah, once when I was a boy, but naturally I dismissed it as being too outrageous." The small film had that kind of big personality.

Flight To Fury (1964)

1964 – Flight To Fury (Lippert Inc/Filipinas Productions Inc)

[Eddie Romero directed a Filipino version released locally as “Cordillera”, release date 24th October 1964]

Director Monte Hellman Story Fred Roos, Monte Hellman Screenplay Jack Nicholson Producer Fred Roos Associate Producer Walter Phelps Executive Producers “M.J.”/Mike Parsons, [uncredited] Eddie Romero Music Nestor Robles Cinematography Mike Accion Editors Joven Calub, [uncredited] Monte Hellman Production Manager Artemio B. Tecson Assistant Director “J.M.”/Jose M. Dagumboy Makeup Baby Buencamino Wardrobe Paquito Salcedo Production Coordinator F.H. de Sena

Cast Dewey Martin (Joe Gaines), Fay Spain (Destiny Cooper), Jack Nicholson (Jay Wickham), Joseph Estrada (Garuda), Vic Diaz (Lorgren), “Jaclyn”/Jacqueline Hellman (Gloria Walsh), Juliet Prado (Lei Ling), John Hackett (Al Ross), Vic Uematsu, Lucien Pan (Police Inspector), Henry Duval, Serafin Sicat, Joe Dagumboy, Robert Arevalo, Jennings Sturgeon (Bearded Man)

Review by Andrew Leavold

In the modern noir script of Flight To Fury, Nicholson, wrote himself the juicy role of antagonist and, in the process, crafted the most multi-layered role. The film’s main protagonist is Joe Gaines (Dewey Martin), a penniless American drifter in South East Asia cadging drinks off fellow American Jay Wickham (Nicholson), self-professed bad luck Jonah and card carrying nihilist. A chance meeting with the aloof beauty Lai Ling leaves one dead body and Gaines on the next plane out of the country along with Wickham, slimy businessman Vincent Lorgrin (Vic Diaz), and Lorgrin’s blonde companion Destiny Cooper (Fay Spain).

Characters, secrets, murky motives and a subplot of missing diamonds are set up before the plane crashes wiping out several passengers and forces the survivors to make their way through the hostile environment battling the anonymous jungle, their own mistrust, and a group of bandidos led by the sleazy, lecherous Garuda, played by future Philippines president Joseph Estrada. A veteran of almost 200 Tagalog films, curiously this is his only English language film, as his small but utterly memorable role is the only one in the cast to match the greasiness of the venerable Vic Diaz.

Nicholson, of course, is the Creator of Flight To Fury’s paranoid microcosmos and, as such, gives himself the most intriguing character and the film's best lines ("Are you interested in death?"). In typical Filipino fashion, the film’s co-producer Eddie Romero, his Filipinas Productions and frequent collaborator Mike Parsons made a local version called Cordillera after the American cast left, using local actors and his own Tagalog script. In a country where 90% of their film history has not survived, this version has not surprisingly disappeared forever, but we are left with the Nicholson/Hellman version, perhaps the finest moment from their combined early careers.

Ron Wells' review on the Film Threat website:

Much has been made of the pair of low-budget political Westerns director Monte Hellman and Jack Nicholson shot back-to-back in Utah for Roger Corman in 1965, "Ride In the Whirlwind" and "The Shooting". Before that though, the pair went to the Philippines to shoot a pair of black-and-white thrillers called "Flight to Fury" and "Back Door to Hell".

As the screenplay to "Flight to Fury" was actually written by Nicholson from a story by Hellman and producer Fred Roos, you can actually see the same themes from Hellman and the same kind of performance from Nicholson that you could expect from their later films, together or apart. Hellman was only about 32 at this time while smilin' Jack was five year younger.

The actual star is Dewey Martin as Joe Gaines. We find Joe losing at a Manila casino's card tables only after witnessing several other people either watching or participating in the exchange of some stolen diamonds. Joe is oblivious to any of this as he finds himself dead broke and quickly befriended by the very strange Jay Wickham (Nicholson).

When a local woman he picks up is murdered while he's in the shower after the pair had sex, Joe figures it's a good time to leave town. He sends a message to his pilot pal Al Ross (John Hackett) to save a seat on the next flight out. Joe sends the message through Jay who promptly invites himself along for the ride. As a matter of fact, most of the other passengers, and Al, look mighty familiar from the opening scenes of the jewelry exchange. Somehow I don't think the flight will actually arrive anyplace any of them had wanted to go.

The budget constraints are fairly obvious, and according to Hellman, filming in the Philippines in the early 1960's was no picnic, either. Even at only 80 minutes, the movie drags along in parts. Most of the cast is okay, though a gang that figures prominently in the story appear as if they just walked out of the Manila production of "West Side Story". It's Nicholson's sardonic and often sociopathic presence that mostly propels the film. He's probably about 26 when this production was shot but he feels fully formed, even more so than in some of his later films.

"Flight to Fury" still looks more competent than the majority of the independent films I see made today, and there's several hints of the great things to come from the people involved. I guess part of the fun is watching the proceedings and realizing that Jack never ever really looked particularly young and innocent. He was crazy even then.

Sudden Death (1975)

1975 – Sudden Death (Topar Films/Caruth C. Byrd Pictures Inc/Hemisphere Pictures [Philippines])

[American co-production with Eddie Romero’s Hemisphere Pictures, filmed in English; released in Mexico as “Muerte Violenta”, and in Finland as “Tuhoojat”]

Director/Philippines Producer Eddie Romero Writer Oscar Williams Producers J. Skeet Wilson, John Ashley Executive Producer Caruth C. Byrd Associate Producers Chuck Courtney, Harry Kohoyda Jr Cinematography Justo Paulino Music Johnny Pate Editors Edward Mann, [uncredited] Monte Hellman Associate Director Eddie Garcia

Unlisted on US credits: 1st Assistant Editor Soly Bina Music Editor Ving Hershon Production Co-Ordinator Harry Kohovda Jr Production Manager Mario David Script Supervisor Boots Wilson Fernandez 2nd Assistant Rodolfo Dabao Jr Production Secretary Lolita Abesamis Assistant to the Producers Harriet Bergere Production Designer Roberto A. Formoso Decor Francisco Balanque Special Effects Supervisor Teofilo Hilario Stunt Co-Ordinator Chuck Courtney Makeup Supervisor Tony Artieda Wardrobe Supervisors Romme Valencia, Beth Heyres Propmaster David Delina Ordinance Denis V. Juban Stills Carl Kuntze Post-Production Supervisor Eric Jeffrey Haims Production Sound Mixer Rustie Castro 2nd Unit Cameramen Proceso Lazaro, Edmund Cupcupin, Jess Masangkay Post-Production Recording Cinesound Music Supervisor J. Skeet Wilson  

Cast Robert Conrad (Harrison “Duke” Smith), Don Stroud (Dominic Elba), Felton Perry (Wyatt Spain), John Ashley (John Shaw), Thayer David (Hauser), Alina Samson, Larry Manetti, Caruth C. Byrd, Chuck Courtney, Ken Metcalfe (Edward Neilsen), Jenny Green, Jess Barker, Nancy Conrad (Melissa Smith), Angelo Ventura, Eddie Garcia (Raoul Hidalgo), Conrad Poe (Brownhats Leader), Tony Gonsalvez, Rocco Montalban (Reuben Gasca), Robert Rivera, Angie Ferro, Joanna Ignatius, [uncredited] Vic Diaz (Carnival Barker), Romy Nario (Bar Goon) [Also listed on the IMDB but not on credits: Bill Raymond, Ron Vawter]

Robert Conrad on Sudden Death:

"Don Stroud broke 3 of my ribs kicking me in the last picture, Sudden Death. I'll explain the picture in one word: Violence! We kill 13 people, no, 14, including three children under 10. Stroud is a great actor but I think he broke my ribs intentionally. Not that he admitted it. Don Stroud is a maniac!" (Galveston Daily News 27/06/75, p.11)

Mini-review by Andrew Leavold:

It’s a supreme joy to watch two of the the great 70s tough guys, Robert Conrad and Don Stroud, pound each other into bloodied mince in a Manila meat works in Eddie Romero’s bleak, black and breathtakingly suave B pic. An international sugar company’s left-leaning President (Ken Metcalfe) watches helplessly as he is shot and his family massacred in the film’s distinctly unsettling opening, and tries to enlist the help of retired CIA man and now beach bum “Duke” Smith (Conrad) before his car in blown to smithereens. The firm’s go-to man (John Ashley) sets up the local anti-corporate activist Brownhats (led by Fernando Poe Jr’s half-brother Conrad) to take the fall, but Duke and his former CIA cohort Wyatt (Blaxploitation regular Felton Perry) decide to take on the company in an all-out war. The two-thirds mark signals Stroud’s entrance as Dominic Elba, a dandy top-dollar assassin and Duke’s respected adversary, and the film subsequently hurtles from one bloodied squib to endless shotgun blasts and its ultimately dour ending with a ferociously assured hand. Romero’s gallows humour from Savage Sisters (1974) is on display (see the brothel scene where a judge is caught with a sheep!) within his characteristically literate and imaginative camera frame; the leads are uniformly excellent, as is Eddie Garcia (also “Associate Director”) as the company’s local Machiavellian representative, Thayer David as the slimy Teutonic chairman and child molester, and the late great Vic Diaz as an uncredited carnival barker.  Also missing from the credits is Monte Hellman, Romero’s associate on Flight To Fury (1963), as co-editor.

Review from the Mondo Digital website:

Legendary for driving TV censors into fits with his wardrobe choices on the classic show The Wild Wild West, Robert Conrad isn't really known as a movie star. Granted, his occasional big screen career had a few highlights, most notably his turn as John Dillinger in the Roger Corman favorite The Lady in Red, but a few years earlier he also appeared in a pair of exotic action films designed to fall somewhere between the family-friendly violence of James Bond and the sadistic exceSudden Deathsses of Dirty Harry. Both became regular TV and VHS mainstays, though in the DVD age they became far more difficult to see until this double feature release.

First up is 1977's bloody, foul-mouthed Sudden Death, one of the many, many exploitation films churned out in the Philippines from director Eddie Romero. In fact, this turned out to be the last stab at a big international production for Romero, who also gave the world The Twilight People, Savage Sisters, Mad Doctor Of Blood Island, and many others, before settling back into local filmmaking. Things start off with a bang as an afternoon barbecue for a couple and their two young sons turns bloody in a hail of bullets. The father, an American businessman named Nielson, manages to survive and is approached by a sleazy, moustached agent (Ashley, weirdly dubbed) who offers to take care of the situation. Instead Nielson goes off to mercenary buddy Duke Smith (Conrad), who prefers to lounge around in a hammock by the beach with his lady friend but changes his mind when Nielson gets blown to bits. Back in business, Duke teams up with his friend Wyatt (RoboCop's Perry) and manages to beat up and intimidate enough people to trace the criminal ring to a foundation in Texas run by ruthless businessmen trying to drain the region dry. However, these unscrupulous millionaires get wind of Duke's snooping and fly in a Dominic Digaldo (Stroud), a smirking assassin in a white suit with a personal grudge against Duke.

Grimy, brutal, and wildly entertaining, Sudden Death is prime '70s drive-in trash in the best sense. The opening scene is astonishing enough, complete with a couple of tykes getting riddled with bullets next to the family pool, but the surprises just keep on coming. A few highlights: shootings, stabbings, beatings, a German child molester with a gun-toting Filipino boy toy named Alfred, and dialogue like "You want poppy?" "You mean pussy, lady, and I wouldn't touch it with your husband's thang!" Of course, the real highlight here is seeing Conrad paired up with the scene-stealing Stroud, whom he first appeared with in the 1971 made-for-TV movie D.A.: Conspiracy to Kill. A fun screen presence from films like Bloody Mama, Death Weekend, and Coogan's Bluff (before he went on to look baffled as a priest opposite Rod Steiger in The Amityville Horror), Stroud enters the film well past the halfway point but gives it a huge injection of energy, strutting around in the highest hat you've ever seen and duking it out with Conrad in an ice plant for the lively (and surprisingly gory) finale. There's even a sick twist ending, too.

Rod Lott’s review from the Oklahoma Gazette 01/10/12:

One of dozens of Filipino director Eddie Romero’s dirt-cheap thrillers lensed in his homeland, Sudden Death is handily the more entertaining of the two. Conrad is kickin’ back and livin’ the easy island life, complete with a female slave, as former CIA spook Duke Smith. He’s reluctantly drawn back into the bam-bam-pow-pow game when an entire American family is gunned down. (It’s the kind of hit ordered by one of those ’70s movie villains — you know the kind: photographed only below the neck so his identity is concealed. Initially, our clues are that he wears a robe and strokes a cat. Until he hurls the pussy into the air.)

This film is Conrad’s Dirty Harry. He acts tougher than tough, and Duke’s hobbies appear to be cursing (“Shit, woman”) and cold-blooded shooting. At one point, he orders a local, “Go spit in his face and kick him in the balls.” Later, he tells another guy, “Son, if you lie to me, I”m gonna spit in your face and kick you in the balls.” So at least the guy is consistent.

It’s a hoot, full of dialogue that’s not only offensive, but doesn’t make a lick of sense now, and probably didn’t then, i.e. “Wow. Look at those Salvation Army faggots.” In one party scene, an older gentleman is caught romancing a sheep. You won’t believe the ending. Or maybe you will. Suffice to say, it spits in your face and kicks you in the balls. While playing circus music.

Review from the Blog Critics website:

These days, the kind of movies that once were made quickly and cheaply for the drive-in circuit are given big budgets and A-list stars. It no longer seems strange that an actor of Liam Neeson's stature is turning up in something like Taken 2, a formulaic action-revenge movie. But back in the heyday of drive-in exploitation, these movies were populated by people like Fred Williamson, Joe Don Baker and Tamara Dobson, and as often as not they were shot in the American South or the Philippines.

In a new double-feature disk from Inception Media Group, we get two disposable movies from the mid-'70s starring Robert Conrad, best known for his TV work on such series as The Wild Wild West (1965-69) and Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976-78). He made few features, but here – paired with the hulking Don Stroud, who makes Conrad look pretty small on screen – he turns in efficient generic performances which hold the movies together without ever raising them above their exploitation roots.

First up is Sudden Death (1977), directed in the Philippines by Eddie Romero, best known in the West for the Blood Island series of horror films he made with producer-star John Ashley (who co-produced here and turns up in a supporting role), although just a couple of years after this potboiler he went on to write and direct the great Filipino national epic Aguila (1980). The script was often of secondary importance in this genre and Sudden Death is no exception. Things like character motivation and story logic take a back seat to the exotic locale and a series of violent encounters and occasional bits of nudity.

The movie opens with the kind of shocking scene Hollywood tends to shy away from, with a group of masked armed men gunning down an American family, including two young children, in their sunny backyard. The father, Ed Neilson, is the manager of a sugar company run by a multi-national board which includes an ex-Nazi, an Arab sheik, and various other stereotypes. It quickly turns out that the board is behind the hit because they don't like the way Neilson favours the rights of local labour over their own profits.

Neilson, who survived the attack partially crippled, goes to ex-CIA agent Duke Smith (Conrad) to ask his help in tracking down his family's killers. But Smith is retired, living a comfortable life on the beach with his daughter, his girlfriend, and an old comrade from his spying days. He turns Neilson down, much to the disappointment of his daughter, but when Neilson is soon killed by a car bomb, his conscience prods him into action.

With his old CIA buddy Wyatt Spain (Felton Perry along for blaxsploitation cred), Smith starts poking around in sugar company business, eventually triggering the release of famed hitman Dominic Digaldo (Don Stroud, showing up half way through the movie), turning the story into a personal fight between the two old antagonists. Bodies pile up in squib-exploding profusion, leading to a very '70s downbeat ending.

Woodyander’s review from the Internet Movie Database:

Some movies bowl you over with an unusually complex and gripping story. Other movies knock you flat on your keister because they are exceptionally well made. Still other films grab you by the scruff of the neck and squeeze until you're gasping for air due to a seriously smoking cast. This terrifically twisty and twisted 70's conspiracy action thriller scores strongly in all three areas, taking the viewer on the kind of wonderfully wicked descent into total nihilism and anti-heroism which could have only been done in a raw, skull-shredding, no-holds-barred in-your-face fashion back in the glorious 70's. Yep, this one's the authentic gnarly article -- and pretty brutal, too.

The always great Robert Conrad rules the day as a gruff, rough'n'tumble soldier of fortune who, assisted by his groovy soul bro partner Felton Perry, winds up knee deep in some heavy, highly illegal and extremely convoluted big business s**t when he decides to investigate a series of murders committed by a shady group of greedy, immoral, anything-for-the-money millionaires who include a disgusting, overweight homosexual pedophile and John Ashley (who also co-produced the film) as an untrustworthy undercover government agent. Conrad, Perry and Ashley all turn in top-notch work, but the guy who easily makes off with the entire picture is consummate celluloid creepo specialist Don Stroud, who gives a sterling performance as a ruthless, long-haired, ice cold professional hit-man who's first seen tossing a cat into the air, has an old score to settle with Conrad, and desperately longs to make a pile of cash so he can successfully bury his embarrassing past as a dirt poor slob kid from the slums.

Director Eddie Romero really lets 'er rip with this fast-paced, darkly amoral, and frequently very violent tale which starts out nasty (a family are graphically blown away while frolicking in a pool!) and gets even nastier as the whole intricate story unfolds, concluding with a devastatingly grim surprise ending that hits the unsuspecting viewer with all the ferocity of a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Further enhanced by Johnny Pate's brassy, funky, wah-wah guitar driven score, uniformly cool'n'cruel characters, a fiercely protracted knock-down, drag-out barroom brawl, several unflinchingly vicious chopsocky fights (Conrad hits countless guys in the groin and engages in an intensely cooking climactic slow motion martial arts face-off with Stroud), splashy, generously squibbed gun shots, and a nice cameo by an uncredited Vic Diaz as a carnival barker, Sudden Death hits hard and takes no prisoners, thereby rating highly as a definite must-see 70's Filipino exploitation gem.

Alan Dorkin’s review from the Internet Movie Database:

I found this film on VHS tape yesterday from a flea market. I had never heard of this before. I watched it today and liked it very much! The film is located in the Philippines, which I found very interesting. Usually these kind of movies take place in the east coast (New York) or west coast (San Francisco or Los Angeles) in the USA. This film is a rare exception of this.

The movie begins with some gangsters killing a family, a scene which reminds me of similar scene in Once Upon A Time In The West. The father of the family survives. After a while two long-time friends got to fight against the bad guys in many ways and several different places. The story is very confusing, mainly because the characters got very little introducing. But that's not so important in action movies...

The fighting and shooting scenes are very cool with a lot of shot-gun action and slow-motion camera. The actors are good, the dialogue is wonderfully explicit, editing works fine and the scenes are set up almost perfectly. I really enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone interested of good old action, instead of wire tricks and computer effects in modern actionfilms. The music made a great atmosphere with all those wah-wah guitar and minimoog sounds.

George Pacheco’s review from The Examiner 07/10/12:

Freshly released by Inception Media Group, this 'tough guy' double feature spotlights Hollywood veteran Robert Conrad in two films which showcase the actor's charismatic screen presence and impressive physicality.

Opening the release with a proverbial 'bang,' 1977's Sudden Death is a violent, no frills action flick which evokes fond memories of sleazy, grindhouse drive in fare, as well as the shot-for-cheap Philippines pictures of Roger Corman, such as Too Hot To Handle and Firecracker.

Conrad stars as a former CIA operative who reluctantly becomes involved with a corrupt board of corporate executives, after they ruthlessly murder the family of one of their public face patsies who has become a bit too 'soft' and understanding of their burdened Filipino workers.

Conrad's character of Duke Smith teams up with his old battle buddies to bring the syndicate to justice, all the while trying to keep his wife and daughter out of retaliatory harm's way. Don Stroud co-stars as the syndicate's merciless hitman Dominic Digaldo, who is hired to ensure the demise of Conrad and his buddies, by any possible means.

Sudden Death is capably directed by The Twilight People's Eddie Romero, who keeps the action going at a fast 'n furious pace throughout the film's brisk eighty-seven minutes. Most of the acting is admittedly wooden-particularly from Conrad's daughter Nancy, whose main purpose here is served as a pretty face in a bikini-yet in the end, this doesn't really matter much, as the film isn't here to win any Academy Awards.

No, instead Sudden Death delivers exactly as promised: a rough 'n ready revenge flick with plenty of explosive action, righteous Seventies fashion and a downbeat ending twist which, although expected, retains quite a bit of its original shock value.

Chuck Conry’s review from the Zombies Don’t Run website:

When Ed Neilson’s entire family is viciously murdered, he pleads with retired CIA operative Duke Smith (Conrad) to investigate. He refuses, but relents after Neilson too meets an explosive death. Deception, international intrigue and a ruthless “syndicate of businessmen” intent on raping a South Pacific Islands nation of its resources keep the pace fast. But when the executives hire a treacherous assassin (Stroud), the two are thrown head-to-head in a predestined match of cunning, wit and brute force. Only one will survive. For the other … it’s Sudden Death.

For me Sudden Death was the meat of this meat and potatoes package. This film is packed with cool guys saying cool things and kicking a whole lot of ass. 70s style all around with cheesy 70s style one-liners to boot. The story is a can of worms in a way, but you will only love it that much more when the pace picks up and the body count keeps going up. Making things even harder to swallow from an interest point of view is the real kick the gut the ending gives us. If you dig 70s style violence and exploitation you will need to see this movie.

Fred Adelman's mini-review from his Critical Condition Online website:

Robert Conrad stars as an ex-operative who is forced to return to his killing ways in this Filipino actioner, directed by Eddie Romero (TWILIGHT PEOPLE, WOMAN HUNT - both 1972, WHITE FORCE - 1988). Conrad must find the murderers of the president (and his family) of a huge corporation. Together with his partner (Felton Perry of WALKING TALL), Conrad rages war on the board of directors and the assassin (Don Stroud of THE DIVINE ENFORCER) sent out to kill him. Lots of fights and explosions, although they are rather sloppily filmed. Still, it holds your attention and has a really downbeat conclusion. Co-starring John Ashley (who also co-produced), Larry Manetti (of MAGNUM P.I.) and Filipino staple Vic Diaz in a bit part. From Media Entertainment. Rated R.

Michael Weldon's review in Psychotronic Magazine #32 (2000) p.72

Hemisphere planned to release this Philippines action movie, but apparently never did. Macho former Army man Duke (Robert Wild Wild West Conrad) lives on an island paradise with his blonde daughter (Nancy Conrad), native girlfriend (Aline Samson) and his local mentor (Eddie Garcia). After a suburban bloodbath, a black karate school owner (Felton Perry) arrives from LA to help Duke reluctantly battle revolutionaries. First the old friends spend time at a whorehouse and Duke advises a kickboxer to aim for his opponent's balls. The real bad guys are evil international businessmen, led by a shipping magnet (T'hayer David) who likes young boys. He hires bad guy Ashley (with a 70's Elvis look) who eventually hires a mercenary (Don Stroud). With explosions, a flaming man, many squib shots and a slo-mo ice house battle. Also with Ken Metcalfe and Vic Diaz. Ashley and Garcia were producers. Black American Williams, who directed The Final Comedown (1972), must have been responsible for the addition of symbols of racism (blackface stars, pickinniny dolls...) in the background.