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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Heiress Maria (a beautifully matured Nancy Kwan) returns
from overseas to her family's hacienda at Tierra del Fuego, where their sugar
plantation's workers have been forced to choose between two evils: the sadistic
treatment of her father Don Eduardo (Eddie Garcia at his sneering, domineering
best), or the bandit Torrente (Mel Francisco) and his scorched earth policy
against the sugar baron. Into the hacienda come two strangers, the undercover
cop Tony (former "James Bond of the Philippines" and karatista Tony
Ferrer) who in the line of duty falls in love with the kind-hearted reformer
Maria, and the mysterious kung fu expert Alan Lee (Ruel Vernal), worming his
way as personal bodyguard into Don Eduardo's confidence. An action-drama with a
social conscience, this competent Mirick Films export title directed by George
Rowe - Ferrer's director on a number of 60s Agent X44 films - is punctuated with fistfights,
kung fu brawls, and explosive combat scenes as the hacienda becomes a
battlefield pitting boss against workers and sex-crazed bandidos, and a
fantastic supporting cast - Fred Galang and Chanda Romero playing sibling
worker activists, American actor Logan Clarke as Don Eduardo's equally sadistic
henchman Rico, and Conrad (half-brother of FPJ) Poe as one of Don Eduardo's
sons.
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