the_wolf_imdb This movie is really not bright, not clever and even very naive. It tries to show "brutality of future totalistic camp" but it pales in comparison to harsh reality of real communistic and Nazi camps. In comparison to them this camp looks like holiday resort (except maybe for the "gasoline football").As a show that could teach the viewer something about survival it sucks hard. Basically, the "heroes" do almost everything wrong. The movie may act a a tutorial "how not to survive the turkey shoot". How a man can, for example, to lose firefight against the bow equipped woman when he has automatic rifle with a scope? He never tries to "camp and snipe" which would be probably the most efficient solution here. He never even tries to cover himself with suppressive fire. He just plays a target. Uh.These "heroes" do almost everything wrong - they try to run from the car on open area. The "hero" tries to run from a guy with a rifle with a scope on a rocky waterfall (yes it was pretty but you can hardly invent more stupid solution when there are woods all around). The heroes seem to be unable to stay still when the enemies are around so even if they try to hide it never works.The woman hero has enough time to enjoy relaxing bath instead of using mud for camouflage - and of course not a single hero ever trues to actually use any camouflage so they run in yellow pajamas in mostly gray and brown area. In communistic countries there were basic lessons for kids how to move in the environment unnoticed so I guess that every 10 years old would have better chance to survive the hunt. The heroes seem to like open spaces and running here in pairs hand in hand as they would be playing in the kindergarten.So - the movie is less than useful as a realistic lesson how to survive the hunt. It is just nasty, unrealistic and incoherent fun. Not particularly bright, violent, incoherent but somehow watchable.

tomgillespie2002 Directed by Anglo Australian filmmaker Brian Tenchard-Smith (most notably known for the Australian film that introduced Nicole Kidman to the world, BMX bandits, a kid/family movie, mainly remembered for the zeitgeist trend of the bicycle craze in the title), this post-Mad Max dystopian future movie tells the 'story' of a camp for retraining the 'deviates' of society, so that they may conform to the institutionalised norm as a whole. It begins with three people being taken in the back of a van to the camp of 'Re-Education and behaviour modification'. The camp looks much like the Nazi concentration camps of such films as SS Experiment Camp, or Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. The film begins as all of the usual 'nazisploitation' movies do, with a pinch of titillation and humiliation. This is not however a nazisploitation movie, as it appears to have a more communist edge; as the motto goes (in a quite comical sequence where 'chief' guard Rimmer picks out the smallest woman, and mock-punches to her face, whilst forcing her to recite it), "I am a deviate, lowest form on earth..."The main 'heroes' of the piece, are Paul (Steve Railsback), and Chris (Olivia Hussey - also known for such genre films as It, and Black Christmas). These also constitute the ubiquitous love interest within the plot. Whilst the inhabitants of the camp are humiliated and ritually abused in almost gladiatorial fashions, the main plot stems from the concept highlighted by the films title (although this was altered both for the UK video market - Camp Blood Thatcher; and the US market, Escape 2000), where there are five prisoners who are set 'free' from the camp so that seemingly elite persons from society can game hunt them with no consequences. All this leads to utterly predictable outcomes, resulting in an attempted overthrown of the 'authorities'!The film exploits the concept of game hunting with elements of gore (again ubiquitous of the times of production), but doesn't really explore the societal elements that the protagonists are trying to subvert. We know nothing of the 'societies' structural elements that may instigate any kind of revolution or revolt. What exactly are the protagonists subverting? What are the policies, or dogmas of this 'society'? We only see the camp, and are not given any knowledge of the non-diagetic world beyond this.The rich hunt the imprisoned. That is about as political as this movie gets. OK, so all movies don't necessarily need to have a message, granted. But if you are going to make a film set in a dystopian future, the world needs to be constructed so that we may understand why this future exists. To add insult to injury - despite the finale having a touch of gore - it almost seems like an episode of The A-Team, only people actually get shot. I almost forgot to say; a certain 'thing' accompanies one of the rich on the game hunt that he "found in a freakshow", which is essentially a badly dressed wolf-man. It's as if someone turned up on set in the wrong costume, and the director thought "well, we'll make it work!"If you love bad filmmaking, with no social commentary, and no element of surprise or suspense, then you may well love this. But, it is, and will always be a bore!www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Scarecrow-88 Boy, I'm telling you right now, if you do not like your movies with lots of red meat and sadism, then just skip Brian Trenchard-Smith's TURKEY SHOOT. According to all involved, there was more in the script that was discarded by the producers, the work schedule shortened, budget cut, and the actors were miserable(good portions of the script tossed out because of budgetary restraints changed the entire movie according to Lynda Stoner) having to star in such a gratuitous film as this. Why is such a lovely creature as Olivia Hussey doing in a film such as this? I asked myself that during the big shootout finale as prisoners and guards engage in gunfire as the revolt commences with Steve Railsback driving a terrain loader as Hussey is firing a machine gun. Hussey firing a machine gun is just bizarre; such a fragile, elegant woman, who had somehow found herself in Austrailia acting in this movie, I wonder if she fired her agent after this.Major Spoilers AheadAnyway, Railsback finds himself the star of TURKEY SHOOT, a renowned prison camp escape artist chosen along with three others(Hussey, Lynda Stoner, and John Ley)to be hunted and if they are able to avoid certain death after a period of time will be granted freedom. This group is soon joined by Bill Young whose demise is quite grisly as he's shot by multiple arrows thanks to Carmen Duncan's aristocratic sociopath, Jennifer, before being crushed under the van of warden Charles Thatcher(played by Michael Craig who orders executions, orders, and commands dead pan, only a sinister grin to convey his bloodthirsty nature, particularly evident in one scene where he could easily dispatch Railsback's Paul Anders, caught out in the open, but lets him go, with plans to have more fun before shooting him). You have homosexual Tito(Michael Petrovich)and his "pet", a half-man/half-beast named Alph(Steve Rackman who just looks ridiculous)who stalk joyfully John Ley's scrawny and weak Dodge. We get a nicely wholesome scene where Tito sics Alph on Dodge where he progressively beats the little man to a pulp shortly after ripping off his pinkie toe and eating it! Don't worry, Alph gets his when Anders stabs him in the eye with a broken stick from a tree, moving out of the way as Tito accidentally cuts him in half with the terrain loader. Oh, and Jennifer, who playfully had left Stoner's Rita(after much chase using her arrows with explosive tips)mutilated and butchered, gets a dose of her own medicine when an arrow thrusted into her throat blows her face off. And, Thatcher, well, he had Anders right where he want him, and, in letting him go, gets his just desserts. It's the "highlight" of the film(next to another scene I will mention shortly)where Thatcher gets his head taken off with Anders' machine gun. Roger Ward has the hammiest role as a towering bald menace, Chief Guard Ritter who certainly delights in killing and maiming(one of the more memorable scenes has his head guard destroying a petite short young woman, Thatcher using her as an example towards the others to behave even though she had did nothing wrong). Ritter makes the unfortunate mistake of leaving his machete stuck in the sand while in fisticuffs with Anders. Soon Hussey's Chris Walters is able to stop Ritter from shooting an unarmed Anders by chopping his hands off.Look, this is the kind of movie for fans of blood and guts, dismemberment and explosions, where everything is so over-the-top and beyond the realm of decency that if you enjoy seeing all that I have listed in detail above, then TURKEY SHOOT is for you. I personally found this hilarious and entertaining because of how Trenchard-Smith pushes the envelope and hits the viewer with so many moments of "Woah"(like when Tito gets the machete buried into his skull, flopping into the terrain loader as he bleeds out, or when a trap involving sharpened stakes impales Gus Mercurio's guard Red with his stomach spilling out)that I just sat back in astonishment. There are no boundaries here. The futuristic plot concerns a totalitarian society where the youth are sent to concentration camps in some twisted agenda of "conforming to society's demands". The hunt consists of the higher classes(those who can afford to pay to play or hold powerful positions), with an advantage of having weapons and vehicles(Jennifer rides a horse!), chasing after prisoners(the lower classes)they treat no different than vulnerable animals, prey to be slaughtered, simple as that.

MARIO GAUCI Last week when I stepped into my local DVD rental store, its proprietor (a film-buff friend of mine) gleefully approached me and said that he had just acquired something that would definitely appeal to my cinematic tastebuds. He proceeded to show me a DVD sleeve in German for a film starring Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey and Michael Craig which, while I didn't immediately recognize, its lurid poster promised that goofy fun was to be had by watching this flick. Even when I held the sleeve in my hand and discovered on the keepcase's insert that the film's original title was TURKEY SHOOT, it rang few bells at the time but, apart from that cast, it was the fact that (from what I could make out) the film was yet another adaptation of that horror/adventure perennial "The Most Dangerous Game", that was the main element which made me rent it immediately. While looking up the film on IMDb as soon as I got back home, I realized that what I had acquired was ESCAPE 2000 – a cultish Australian sci-fi film which I knew had been released on R1 DVD by Anchor Bay and was awarded the lazy BOMB rating from our good friends, Mr. Leonard Maltin et al… Anyhow, the film starts with a credit sequence showing real news footage of various street conflicts which had occurred in various parts of the world over the years being passed off as the ongoing riots sparked by the dictatorial rule of some anonymous totalitarian state. The subsequent flashbacks introduce us to the three major characters – Railsback, Hussey and luscious blonde Carmen Duncan – and shows how they came to be herded off to the island colony lorded over by the white-haired sadist Thatcher (Craig); indeed, another alternate and ludicrous moniker for the film was BLOOD CAMP THATCHER (no prizes for guessing the reason behind the choice of just that surname being accorded to the main villain of the piece)! This prison camp contains every dissident known to oppose the current reigning regime but we only really get to meet two other prisoners and a handful of 'eccentric' wardens. In any case, it soon transpires that Craig and his four associates – a high-ranking officer of the ruling party, a lesbian lady with a penchant for shooting exploding arrows, a fey excavator-driving young man and his (I kid you not) wrestler-werewolf lackey-cum-pet!! – organize the occasional hunt for a quintet of their own prisoners through the nearby jungle for sport and relaxation purposes. Speaking of the sexual orientation of two of these aristocratic predators, maybe the director was attempting some kind of political message here (given that homosexuality is itself forbidden by law in this society and prisoners are dubbed 'deviants') but all this did for me was add to the already high camp quotient of the film! Being more of an exploitation than a sci-fi piece, it follows that gore and nudity feature in the film's ingredients: the latter mostly makes itself felt inside the prison walls with the wardens leering over the naked girls banded together while taking forced showers but the former is more to the forefront with one of the hunted prisoners having his back broken by a moving vehicle, the werewolf being accidentally torn in half (literally) by his own keeper's excavator, the latter gets his own come-uppance by a machete blow to the head which splits his skull in two, the lady having one of her own exploding arrows shoved into her throat and capped by her head being blown off, Thatcher expiring in a hail of machine-gun fire which ludicrously tears him to shreds, etc. Apparently (and unsurprisingly), this film has been endorsed by Quentin Tarantino of late since its British director earned a "Special Thanks" in the credits of the latter's DEATH-PROOF [2007]) but looking through his filmography, it's clear that this was his only claim to fame (and a very relative one at that). The rest of the film crew, however, is more interesting in that it includes executive producers David Hemmings and John Daly (who, incidentally, has just passed away) and composer Brian May (of the MAD MAX series, rather than popular rock band Queen's curly-haired guitarist).While the film can't hope to dispel the memories of the original 1932 Merian C. Cooper-David O.Selznick production of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, its solid remake from The Boulting Brothers RUN FOR THE SUN (1956; with Richard Widmark and Trevor Howard) or Cornel Wilde's similar human-hunt opus THE NAKED PREY (1966), I have to admit to being entertained by it and, in view of the "Special Edition" nature of the Another World DVD I rented – which includes the director's audio commentary, alternate title sequences and a host of trailers for other exploitation movies like PATRICK (1978) and THE NEW BABRBARIANS (1982; which promises to be an even bigger hoot than the film under review) – I have subsequently added the bloody, goofy thing to my collection!