I love it when people insist on their names being part of their film’s title, even if realistically their names aren’t going to mean much outside of their immediate friends and family. Thus, in the tradition of Bart La Rue’s Satanwar, Krishna Shah’s Rivals, and Peter Kay’s Sexy Secrets of the Kiss-o-gram Girls, we here have “Patrick G. Donahue’s Kill Squad”.
While he isn’t exactly the household name that his title billing here might imply, Donahue has had a steady career directing low-budget action movies, mostly starring himself and his son. The most well known of the bunch being 1991’s Savage Instinct, released by Troma as ‘They Call Me Macho Woman’. A film in which at one point the heroine escapes from the bad guys by walking along the tops of their heads, then proceeds to taunt them by grabbing her crotch, and if that doesn’t entice you into seeing ‘They Call Me Macho Woman’ nothing will.
Beginning as he clearly meant to go on, Donahue’s first film Kill Squad is a simplistic, eager to please action-fest that I’m genuinely surprised isn’t crushed upon more by lovers of trashy 1980s movies. I’m also a little surprised that it has taken this long for the film, and indeed the rest of the Donahue oeuvre, to show up on my radar as well. I have to confess I’d never even heard of this guy till about 48 hours ago. Needless to say, I now want to see everything he has ever made.
The bare bones plot of Kill Squad concerns Joseph Lawrence (Jeff Risk) a former Vietnam veteran turned successful electronics businessman. Lawrence’s life is turned on its head when a bunch of goons led by a business rival of his called Dutch (Cameron Mitchell) breaks into his house, gang rapes and murders his wife, then shoots Lawrence, leaving him paralysed. Now wheelchair bound, a grief stricken Joseph Lawrence has revenge on his mind, and calls on his Nam vet buddies to form ‘The Kill Squad’. A bunch of vigilantes who have to fight literally hundreds of bad guys in order to get to Mitchell’s final villain.
Each member of this tough guy supergroup gets their own thumbnail sized intro, which quickly establishes what they’ve been up to since Nam, and the fact that they don’t take bullshit from anyone. Tommy (Gary Fung) has been working as a gardener for a racist shitbag who refuses to pay him and calls him a ‘nip’ at a pool party. Tommy responds by beating the bejesus out of him and several of his men, easily ensuring a cheque for garden services rendered. K.C. (Jerry Johnson) has become a Dolemite style badass pimp who refers to his hoes as ‘salt and pepper’ and whose martial arts moves and streetwise quips come in handy when a rival pimp tries to muscle in on his territory. Donahue was a man who clearly wasn’t about to let the Kung-Fu and Blaxploitation genres die off without a fight. All of these sequences end with the other guys showing up, hi-fiving their bro, and recruiting them into The Kill Squad with the film’s catchphrase “Joseph needs you”.
Kill Squad plays like a live-action version of an arcade game we all should have been dropping coins into during the 1980s. Characters are only distinguishable by their weaponry and ethnicity. It feels as if there should be an option to play as either Tommy, the Oriental guy (special weapon: fighting sticks), Larry, the Afro-ed black guy (special weapon: ninja stars), Alan, the muscular white guy (special weapon: a pair of nunchaku), Pete, the Mexican guy (special weapon: two pairs of nunchaku), K.C, the black pimp (special weapons: switchblade + jive talk) or Arthur, the Jewish guy aka the one with the Bruce Lee T-Shirt (special weapon: the sword). True to the arcade game format, these characters battle their way through various backdrops (the junkyard, the used car lot, the construction site) before moving on to the next level.
The average scene in the film involves the Kill Squad shaking down some poor S.O.B for information as to Cameron Mitchell’s whereabouts, only for all of the guy’s work buddies to come to his aid, necessitating that the Kill Squad kick all their asses. The poor S.O.B eventually reveals he knows another poor S.O.B who ‘might’ know Cameron Mitchell’s whereabouts. At which point BOOM!!! a mysterious sniper takes out the snitch and one of the Kill Squad. After mourning their fallen comrade for all of about 5 seconds, the Kill Squad rush off to shake down the next poor S.O.B for information as to Cameron Mitchell’s whereabouts, only for all of the guy’s work buddies to come to his aid...and exactly the same thing happens as in the previous scene. No matter what their occupation or walks of life- hardhats, car salesmen, lawyers, scrap metal workers, party guests- everyone in this film appears to be an accomplished martial artist who wants to take on the Kill Squad. In fact if this film is to be believed, the only person on the face of the planet who doesn’t know martial arts is Cameron Mitchell.
Downsides to the movie are that the repetitious ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ nature of the plot begins to set in towards the end, and most will guess the identity of the masked sniper way in advance of the intended big reveal. To give credit where its due though, Donahue does throw in an insane other ‘twist’, when its revealed that one of the Kill Squad faked his own death and has been waiting on the sidelines until the sniper reveals himself. At which point the presumed dead member of the Kill Squad discloses to the sniper that he cheated death by wearing a bulletproof vest, which he then stupidly takes off right there in front of the sniper, who proceeds to slice him up with a sword!!! Such is the knuckleheaded logic of your average Kill Squad character.
Straight to video in the UK, Kill Squad was released on tape by Mike Lee’s Vipco company, one of the earliest VHS labels to openly embrace exploitation movies. While Mike Lee did sporadically dabble in financing movies himself, having put up the money for Andy Milligan’s Carnage (1983), the troubled horror film eventually released as ‘Spookies’ in 1986 and the car crash compilation video ‘Britain’s Women Drivers’ in 1995, Vipco’s involvement in Kill Squad appears to be purely as an after-the-fact video distributor. The ‘Michael D. Lee’ credited as the producer of the film being unlikely to be the Vipco Mike Lee, whose middle name is Anthony. Still Kill Squad is a film that’s perfectly at home amidst the Vipco brand of entertainment, and equally in keeping with the cheap thrill loving mentality of the early video renting public. Gore, Kung-Fu, car chases and racial insults are thrown around like confetti at a wedding. Filler and boredom appear to be alien concepts in the cinema of Patrick G. Donahue, his films could never be accused of standing still, and it is difficult not to be won over by a filmmaker so singularly hell-bent on giving you an action packed good time. Fuck it, I’ve changed my mind, this guy EARNS the right to have his name above the title after all.
Whoever did put up the money for Kill Squad, that money bought them a few scenes worth of Cameron Mitchell chewing the scenery, a cast of real life martial arts experts putting in passable acting performances, countless onscreen brawls, a paper thin script, some spectacular vehicular destruction, and the occasion pair of bare breasts. In other words...money well spent.
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