Though usually pretty laid-back, easy rider Peter Fonda jumps into the role of a two-fisted action hero, surprisingly ready to take on a quartet of small-town goons when they try to run from a fender bender in the first few minutes of Fighting Mad.

Directed by future Oscar winner Jonathan Demme for, of course, Roger Corman, here Fonda is farm boy Tom Hunter, returning from the city with his bratty kid after a relatively painful divorce; within minutes of a happy reunion, his brother Charlie (Scott Glenn) is murdered by the aforementioned goons who work for a local land developer.

Taking a page from the book of Brad Wesley, this developer Crabtree (Philip Carey) thinks he owns the town, disinterring an old lady’s makeshift cemetery, causing a rockslide that destroys a family’s home, beating up Hunter’s dear old pop and setting his barn on fire.

At first, Hunter was merely mad — but now he’s fighting mad, hence the title.

Shot and edited in that atmospheric style many of Corman’s New World pics had, Fonda is at his most energetic here, whether he’s running from killers on a dirt bike with his son on his lap or shooting various guards outside of Crabtree’s dwelling with a bow and arrow, delivering a country-fied revenge flick that actually gives us a happy, if mostly nonsensical, ending. —Louis Fowler

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Since the fatalistic conclusion of Easy Rider, few actors had as many downbeat cinematic endings as Peter Fonda did, with the explosive train collision in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry one of his depressive best that, at least, would go on to be anonymously immortalized in the intro to TV’s The Fall Guy.

Here, Fonda is the titular insane Larry who, along with a reptilian Adam Roarke, is part of a pair of groovy grocery store robbers who specialize in highly intricate — almost too intricate — capers that almost include the murder of a little girl, all to pay for their future NASCAR needs.

On this particular getaway, they’re additionally saddled with the filthy Mary (Susan George), a sexual conquest from the night before. As the trio speeds off in their incredibly impressive Dodge Charger with eccentric police tactics constantly trying to chase them down, including one dude in a high-performance interceptor and the quirky sheriff himself trying to run them over in a helicopter.

With Fonda at his coked-out best and George at her wide-eyed worst, they’re a couple with nothing but softball barbs to sling between them, with the saving grace of sorts being Roarke as a lizard with something of a heart-on for the stowaway.

But that out-of-nowhere ending, man … even for a Fonda flick, it’ll still shake the entire room. —Louis Fowler

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With an English title that basically translates to Slut Commando — my favorite kind of commando, natch — this shot-on-video movie from Mexico stars Jenny Lore as conservative teacher Brenda. When one of her pupils is kidnapped by a devil-worshipping drug lord — a narcosatanico! — she must go undercover to track this little girl down.

And where does her investigation lead her? To a strip club in some dude’s living room where no one ever actually gets nude, but there is an owner who snorts copious amounts of nose candy and forgives easily. Brenda, after singing a song of romance instead of getting naked, eventually tells the other dancers about her life before she was a teacher.

Seems that, as a child, Brenda and her brother were taken in by a highly secretive arm of the Texas Rangers that teaches things to children like martial-arts skills, computer hacking and I think medical training; even worse, while on a mission, her brother was killed by a narcosatanico — the very same one who has kidnapped said little girl!

After a montage of Brenda training the strippers to become expert ninjas and prime marksmen, they break into the drug lord’s barely guarded fortress — which resembles a theater-in-the-round, actually — and all hell breaks loose, literally. Thanks for nothing, Satan.

If you can get past the cheap-looking wipes and fades, there is a stupidly intriguing story here, one that is padded with so many watchable scenes of fully clothed sensuality and Luciferian spin kicks, it’s hard to hate it. Throw in the most miraculous ending ever — a cripple walks! — and Commando Zorras is guaranteed to bump and grind for a caustically throbbing 80 minutes. —Louis Fowler

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There once was a time when Hollywood made moving pictures for our two-fisted fathers and four-fisted grandfathers, solid men who slugged it out with Nazi beasts overseas like they were on the cover of a damn paperback novel. And perhaps the best movie to come from this lost era is the nail-spittin’ POW flick The Great Escape.

Based on the rousing true story, a daring team of Allied soldiers — mainly British — are stuck behind the walls of a Nazi prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III. Built especially for those captured servicemen who had been wasting Germany’s precious time and valuable resources with their constant escape attempts, it was supposed to be inescapable.

But with a camp full of hardened men who have only one thing on their minds — freedom — this crew comes up with an ingenious plan to get out at least 250 soldiers by digging three tunnels, right under the noses of the Germans. But you can make sure those kraut bastards are going to make them work for it every step of the way.

With Steve McQueen in a star-making role as Hilts, a captain with a bad attitude and good motorcycle skills, The Great Escape is well over three hours, but doesn’t feel like it, thanks to director John Sturges’ ability to make James Clavell and W.R. Burnett’s script constantly filled with chest hair-riddled action from start to finish.

Co-starring James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Donald Pleasence — to name a few — this is, for me at least, one of the best films ever made, the kind that couldn’t be made today … but thank God they made it yesterday. —Louis Fowler

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It’s May and the only film released in 2020 I’ve seen in an actual theater has been Bad Boys for Life; at this rate, I’m thinking it could take Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards.

And, even if it did happen, I really wouldn’t be mad because, for all intents and purposes, this third film in the Bad Boys series — set some 15 or so years later — is the buddy-cop film I’ve been patiently waiting for since, at the very least, Bad Boys 2.

Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are the two titular bad boys of the Miami PD, wrecking cars and blowing up shit, throwing out comedic bon mots with every act of public destruction. The fun comes to an end, however, when, during a fun footrace, Lowery is shot at point-blank range by an enterprising cartel heir on a black motorcycle.

It turns out that, before he was a bad boy, Lowery was an undercover boy, working with a government agency to go deep undercover as a Mexican drug lord’s lover. That mujer (Kate del Castillo, pigeonholing herself) is mad as hell, having spent decades in jail; now she’s a bruja out for bloody revenge that takes the duo — as well as a squad of younger bad people — to Mexico where life is, apparently, cheap.

Taking the high-speed reins from Michael Bay — who cameos as a wooden wedding guest — directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have got his patented blueprint down for this type of over-the-top film which, really, is pretty basic by now; thankfully, they’ve added plenty of their own stolen touches, obviously inspired by the Fast & Furious flicks.

With a fourth film in the works, my only complaint is they really should have saved this title for the next one, the “for” a stylized number 4: Bad Boys 4 Life … I think it works, right? —Louis Fowler

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