Swift Justice (1988)

February 20, 2002

by Nathan Shumate

Written and directed by Harry Hope
Starring
- John Green
- Cindy Rome
- Chuck “Porky” Mitchell
- Aldo Ray
- Ted Le Plat
- Wilson Dunster
Produced by Harry & Nancy Hope

Holy cow, it’s an entire movie populated by stupid people!

Stupid Person #1: Our, uh, “heroine” — Marcy (Cindy Rome), a blonde young performer in Hollywood (you can tell, because the movie opens with an oh-so-original shot of the big letters on the hill), who gets a call from her agent (nice cameo, Cameron Mitchell) telling her that he’s gotten her a gig at the Aladdin in Vegas. Giddy with excitement, she sets out on a road trip in her VW Bug.

Now, I will admit that I’ve never driven from Hollywood to Las Vegas. However, I will take it as an article of faith that there is an Interstate highway or combination thereof which will convey a traveller from one to the other. In other words, you’d have to be working pretty damned hard at being stupid to manage to get yourself lost in trackless dirt roads in the desert between Point A and Point B, wouldn’t you? Congrats — that’s where Marcy is when both her engine temperature light and her oil light go on simultaneously. (I did mention she’s driving a VW Bug, didn’t I? Not exactly a Range Rover.)

“I knew I shoulda made that left turn at Albuquerque…”

Her car finally coughs and quits, and she does what anyone would do. No, wait, she does only what a stupid person would do: She stays right there. She’s in a valley between two hills, but does she think to climb one of the hills to see if there happens to be a Jiffy-Lube right around the corner? No, she just waits by the car until overcome by heatstroke.

By all rights, and according to the economical demands of Darwinism, she should be removed from the gene pool right here. But that would be too short a movie to charge full rental price for, so instead she’s rescued — by an awfully-young-to-be-ex-Special-Forces blond mountain man (John Green) who lives in a corrugated metal shack, mines his itty-bitty gold mine, and hunts rabbits with his tame falcon. I’n guessing they were actively courting Marc Singer for this role. He finds her unconscious, takes her back to his shack, and cares for her through the night.

In the morning, after they’ve properly introduced themselves, he jerry-rigs her car to get her to the next town. Needless to say, they’re kinda smitten with one another, and he gives her a little bracelet with one of his gold nuggets on it to remember him by. (It might be easier for us to remember him if he had a name, but up to now nobody’s bothered to mention it. I’ll point that particular revelation out when we come to it.)

“You’re the real Beastmaster? Like, wow!”

The next town, unfortunately, is Pop’s Oasis, population 155, and the entirety of said population appears to be made up of people who were too stupid to be other villages’ idiots. Four of these idiots will, unfortunately, be taking up an awful lot of screen time. We’re introduced to them rather efficiently, as the four of them are playing poker in the one-and-only watering hole:

The judge (credited as Chuck “Porky” Mitchell, the titular character of the Porky’s series, and with good reason);
Sheriff Benny (Aldo “I’m a genre legend, really, don’t you want an autograph?” Ray, and don’t even get me started on the idea of a town with a population of 155 having the money for even a single full-time lawman);
Ken (Ted Le Plat), the young and ignernt mechanic;
and Cyril (Winston Dunster), who’s occupation is never given, but who appears to have managed to be the designated village idiot in a municipality chock-full of candidates).

So when Marcy comes in to use the phone and hunt up a mechanic, she’s promptly brought to the foursome’s attention. Ken takes her over to the garage, where he promptly sabotages her car further and tells her its going to be a few days and several hundred dollars. (He also hits on her so poorly that she doesn’t even know she’s being hit on — and vapid as Marcy is, a boob-jobbed blonde in Hollywood would have plenty of experience with identifying competent come-ons.) And he invites Cyril over, so at least we don’t have to worry about being too subtle anymore; Cyril’s the hip-thrusting, lip-licking type. (Cyril, by the way, lives at his mother’s brothel. You tell me how a town with a popultion of 155 can support a cathouse with at least five prositutes.)

Meanwhile, the Judge and Sheriff Benny have decided that they’re not taking in enough money on speeding tickets, so they decide to “find” some violations on Marcy’s car in order to rack up some fines. Actually, it’s not terribly trumped up — her tires are bald as an egg, and she has no rear-view mirror — but between the repairs and the fines, she doesn’t have enough money. She offers them the gold nugget bracelet, but Ken instead suggests, um, taking out payment in kind.

She reacts rather violently to the idea, so they chase her out into the night-shrouded junkyard, tie her down, and well, rape her.

Cyril, Benny, Judge, and Ken: Four total wastes of bio-mass.

It this graphic? Yeah, pretty much — you get to see three men in succession get down on all fours over her and thrust away despite her screams. (Three men? That’s right, the Judge settles for whipping her with his belt from a standing position. Personally, I think that’s simply because the prospect of getting Chuck “Porky” Mitchell down on all fours and back up again was just too daunting.)

Is it disturbing? Hell, yes. And more so because it happens in the middle of a movie composed of nothing but crap. I mean, the atrocities in Schindler’s List were grueling, but you didn’t feel offended because Spielberg was trying to put forth a version of Truth, and it was important to see that. In this case, however, the movie’s a cheap piece of inept exploitation, and the fact that a scene like this carries on so long in a movie that’s eminently forgettable and worthless in all other respects makes you wonder how the yippee-ki-yay director Harry Hope managed to convince himself that this was “entertainment.”

I should also let you know that we’re about 35 minutes into the movie before we get to the “inciting incident.” How has such a thin plot covered so much screen time? Mostly by long slow shots of Marcy driving, Blond Mountain Guy hunting with his falcon and tending fire, the four bastards playing cards, a looooong and pointless scene of Ken and Marcy in the garage… Given that the pointless filler scenes consistently run overlong, it comes as no surprise that the rape scene, which is actually germane to the plot, wears out its welcome long before its conclusion.

At last it ends, with Marcy raped and whipped into a state of catatonia. They all leave, giving Cyril instructions to “get rid of her,” but he can’t bring himself to bash in her brains (all the while muttering that they “shoulda eaten her” — classy), and instead he goes off to get drunk.

Yes, that is a chicken on his groin. Make up your own punchline.

In the morning, Sheriff Benny takes an interest in the nugget bracelet, which Marcy had identified as coming from the mountain man who rescued her, and decides to go out looking for more gold from the same place. He arrives at the seeming-deserted shack, but in reality — get this — Blond Guy is hiding in one of those movable bushes. (You gotta be kidding me. Where’s Wile E. Coyote in all of this?) Through a series of loooooong continuous shots, Benny tosses the shack, then finds the entrance to the hidden mine, stumbles around with lantern, finds a few nuggets, and has just stuffed them in his pockets when Blond Guy finally attacks him. Benny does surprisingly well against him, considering that we’re talking about an overweight, over-the-hill small-town sheriff versus an ex-Special Forces vet with well-defined muscles who’s just spent the night having ‘Nam flashbacks. (‘Nam flashbacks? I’d be surprised if this guy’s thirty yet; he musta been in junior high during the Viet Nam conflict.)

Big’n'Blond then beats the truth out of Benny as to where he got the nugget (though Benny disclaims having participated), then handcuffs him into the back seat of the squad car and sends it over a cliff. He then sneaks into town, where Marcy is still tied between two cars in the junkyard — this despite it being late in the morning. I guess you could consider this good news, in that the Fabulous Foursome don’t seem to have enough experience at gangrape to cover it up well. (The Judge, by the way, is off teaching Sunday School, and gets to read and explain the bit from one of the Pauline epistles about fighting powers, principalities, and “wickedness in high places.” Yes, already, we get it! Thanks you for attempting irony, Mr. Hope; please don’t try it again, okay?)

Blond Guy brings the still-catatonic Marcy back to his cabin and — ALERT ALERT ALERT — we finally find out his name! “Marcy,” he says, “it’s me — Phil.”

“Phil”? Our anti-social, PTSD-tortured, about-to-go-all-Rambo Nordic hero is named “Phil”? Too late, fella. You’ve been “Dar” all through my notes, and “Dar” you shall stay.

That Judge sure is a hardcore smoker, ain’t he?

Whatever you call him, though, he hits the vengeance trail back to town. First he finds Ken alone in the garage. They have a pretty embarrassing fight, until Ken manages to cut off his own hand with a circular saw. (Told you it was embarrassing.) Dar/Phil takes him out to the illkempt graveyard, buries him up to his neck, steals some honey from a convenient beehive and lays a trail from a nearby anthill to Ken’s head. Then he walks away, all stolid-like. (Then, inexplicably, we cut from a shot of Ken’s head to a shot of an embarrassingly bad fake Ken head, as the ants crawling all over it somehow cause one eyeball to pop out.)

Oh, I should tell you, that Ken, Cyril, and the Judge had discovered Marcy’s absence and suspected that Dar/Phil would be on their trail; their great defensive strategy, apparently, was to split up and go about their normal business, remaining as vulnerable as possible. Did I mention that whole Village of Idiots thing?

Blondie next goes after the Judge, capturing him in his house after the Judge takes a loooooooooong walk around the house to check the security of the windows. Attempting poetic justice or something, Phil-Master sets some of his mining dynamite to be lit by the sun focused through the Judge’s own glasses. I don’t know why this would be poetic, since so far the Judge’s glasses haven’t played a part. BOOM goes the judge.

Cyril, the last one left, hears the explosion and runs for the relative safety of the watering hole. This is a mistake held in common with Zombie Nightmare — when the good guy is tracking down the bad guys, it really ups the drama to leave either the most challenging foe or the ringleader [ideally, one person is both] until the last so you can have a climactic battle. Instead, we’ve got Blond ‘n’ Buff tracking the least capable of a group of morons. The chase is stymied momentarily by the crowd at the bar, which only demonstrates that the Fab Four are not remarkable in their lack of wit or redeeming qualities in this Village of the Damnably Stupid. Cyril manages to get away and back to the back door of his mother’s whorehouse, but then he gets killed by a boobytrap that Blond Dude had previously set there, involving a string pull and a pitchfork. So, like I guess that’s the last of them. How exciting and climactic.

The Philinator goes back to the shack to tell Marcy that he has avenged her — and the light reflecting off of his manly dogtags miraculously brings her out of her catatonia. She sits up, all perky and snuggly and showing absolutely signs of major trauma.

Our final scene shows that Marcy did, indeed, make it to Vegas, where she headlines a rather tawdry-looking cabaret act, singing a vaguely “I Will Survive”-themed song to the enthusiastic applause of her cleaned-up mountain man savior. Gosh, I guess dreams do come true. Roll credits.

Really, I’ve got very little to say at this point. This is an obscure movie; the IMDb has no entry for it, and Allmovie.com has only a short blurb (which, as with most of their short blurbs, isn’t even remotely accurate as to the plot). I almost wonder if I’m commmitting a sin by bringing awareness of its existence to more people, as it’s certainly not worth the time it takes to watch it. I should note, though, that writer/director Harry Hope is the credited producer/co-director of The Doomsday Machine, so it’s pretty clear that whatever sin I may here be guilty of, Hope’s got infernal reservations at least a few circles lower than mine.

Update: A correspondent (apparently one of this site’s 4.3 fans) has compared cast lists and concludes that this movie is actually listed on the IMDb under the title “Hateman.” Which is even goofier. So if you find yourself confronted with a tempting rental video box for Hateman, you have been warned.