With all the low-budget panache of an unauthorized ABC Afterschool Special made on spec by the assistant to the second assistant director of Exterminator 2, the perennial dollar-bin favorite South Bronx Heroes both looks and feels like the cinematic equivalent of a missing child’s last known photo, one that happened to be photobombed by a breakdancing Mario Van Peebles (Rappin’).

Somewhere in the suburbs — we reckon it’s the suburbs, as the set is comprised of a wood-paneled rumpus room, and that’s a pretty suburban thing, right? — a child pornographer (complete with a script supervisor, boom mic operator and an intern to slate the scene) is berating some kids, so much so that they get the gumption to finally run away, an act which seems to encompass crossing over a mountain range that leads directly to the hellish landscape that is the Bronx. South Bronx, to be exact.

At this is all happening, a Naval-hatted Mario Van Peebles, complete with a rambunctious pet ferret, arrives in the South Bronx, fresh out of the Navy Mexican prison. He’s immediately accosted by a trio of multiethnic toughs armed with nunchucks, but Mario is quick to pull out a pistol, dub them the “faggot Mod Squad” and take all of their clothes.

As our pair of runaways find an abandoned building to squat in, they make the most of their days, eating garbage, avoiding area ruffians and sitting on rocks, staring off into the sun, dreaming of a better life as a brutally maudlin song about believing in yourself and fighting for what’s right Casiotones in the background.

Meanwhile, over at the Peebles place, Mario’s no-nonsense sister wants him to get a job and go straight, but he’d rather hang out at underpasses with his ferret, occasionally chilling with a breakdancing crew as (courtesy of Mario himself) a brutally maudlin rap about believing in yourself and fighting for what’s right Casiotones in the background.

When said orphans are busted taking a shower in his crib, after asking many inappropriate questions about the kiddie-porn biz in what I’m sure was director William Szarka’s idea of comic relief, Mario slaps on a 1940s suit and fedora, and goes undercover to help bring those suburban scumbags to justice. Wonder Years block of clay Dan Lauria shows up as an FBI agent for 30 seconds to offer his reluctant thanks in cracking the case.

About 10 minutes after, they called a wrap on filming, the always prolific Mario walked right up the block and started shooting the similarly themed DVD dollar-bin favorite Children of the Night, co-starring Kathleen Quinlan (Breakdown) as a sociology student undercover in the world of teenage prostitution. —Louis Fowler

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Like the more serious first cousin of Death Race 2000, the Roger Corman/Shaw Brothers co-production Cannonball! reunites that film’s director, Paul Bartel, and hard-driving star, David Carradine, for yet another round of cross-country carmageddon, this time minus the future setting and pedestrian bloodletting.

Based on the real-life outlaw sporting event known as the Cannonball Run, Cannonball! follows several participants daring to make the four-wheeled, trans-American trek from the Santa Monica Pier to New York City for a $100,000 payday. Per the screenplay by Bartel and 1980s megawatt producer Don Simpson (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Flashdance, et al.), the audience is to root for Carradine’s ex-con character of Coy “Cannonball” Buckman, he of the striped Trans-Am, red handkerchief and corrections-officer girlfriend (Veronica Hamel, When Time Ran Out …). His chief rival in the race is the gun-toting good-ol’-boy Redman (Bill McKinney, First Blood), on whom Buckman busts out the kung fu.

Other notable participants include a young and in-love SoCal couple (The Howling’s Belinda Balaski and Revenge of the Nerds’ Robert Carradine); a van full of women, driven by Bartel’s frequent co-star, Mary Woronov (Hellhole); and a rotund family man (Carl Gottlieb, Jaws), who cheats by immediately loading his Blazer into a plane and then unloads into his busty mistress (Louisa Moritz, New Year’s Evil). Cameos abound, including Corman as California’s district attorney, Hollywood Boulevard co-directors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush as junkyard gearheads, and as hoods who share a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Martin Scorsese and Sylvester Stallone.

Five years later, the Shaw Brothers’ fiercest Hong Kong studio competitor, Golden Harvest, took the same idea to the bank with the all-star, big-budget The Cannonball Run. But whereas director Hal Needham steered that Burt Reynolds ego vehicle from mere madcap into mental retardation, Bartel keeps Cannonball! on an even keel of action and humor. He even throws in a couple of surprising deaths. Bottom line: It’s a real hubcap-popper that delivers and delivers and delivers. —Rod Lott

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Having burst into the straight-to-VHS scene with the 1983 shot-on-video “classick” Sledgehammer, director David A. Prior upgraded to actual 35mm film for his sophomore effort, Killzone. The man-on-moon leap in image quality is its only superior element to Prior’s prior engagement.

With opening credits complete, Killzone zones in on an Asian military leader (Daniel Kong, Surf Nazis Must Die) teasing a bunch of white American soldiers with drinking water. It’s a hot day, see, and they’re bound to wooden poles, like prisoners of war. This, however, is no war — it’s a mere training exercise, but either someone forgot to tell McKenna (Fritz Matthews, Prior’s Killer Workout) or the man just has snapped. (Considering viewers aren’t privy to this info for a long while, I think it’s a toss-up.) The scenario prompts McKenna’s Vietnam flashbacks to feel like Vietnam here-and-nows, so he starts fighting back and killing for real.

This deviation from the rules doesn’t sit well with the cigar-chomping Col. Crawford (David James Campbell, Scarecrows); rather than just bitch-slap McKenna back into reality, he orders his men to shoot to kill. But this plot begs the question: Are McKenna’s flashbacks of Crawford killing our hero’s wife and child legit or phony?

Actually, I take that back; I don’t need to know. If Prior doesn’t aim for clarity, why should I ask for it? Viewers of his Deadly Prey will note Killzone’s eerie resemblance to that 1987 flick’s look, feel and cast (including Prior’s bro, Ted, and the aforementioned Campbell, who plays the same part in everything but name), but this one is missing that one’s overall shot of cutout-bin adrenaline. Only in the third act, when McKenna booby-traps the jungle (including the world’s most perfectly and conveniently timed death by boulder), does Killzone catch up to Prey’s pervading sense of fun. —Rod Lott

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Producer Irwin Allen kept his once-Towering cinematic credibility in flames with Fire, a virtual remake of his previous year’s telepic Flood — just with another basic concept from your high school chemistry class (or a then-rather popular 1970s R&B-funk band).

The real-life town of Silverton, Oregon, comes under siege from a massive blaze sparked by the cigarette butt carelessly discarded by a greasy convict (Neville Brand, Psychic Killer) doing chain-gang cleanup work in the forest. In the line of fire — literally! — are such soaped-up characters as a widowed lodge owner (Vera Miles, The Spirit Is Willing), the well-below-her-league old man who has tried to get into her pants for decades (Ernest Borgnine, The Poseidon Adventure), and a teacher (Donna Mills, who clenched a bigger role two years later in Hanging by a Thread, another Allen tele-epic) on a field trip with her young charges.

And speaking of Hanging by a Thread, Patty Duke again assumes the role of an unhappy wife, here married — for the moment, at least — to a fellow doctor (Alex Cord, Chosen Survivors). Perhaps their love will be, um, reignited? Dur.

An Allen touchstone, the well-stocked cast is fun to watch, including Erik Estrada (Airport 1975) as a prisoner who uses the smoke as convenient cover for an escape. Director Earl Bellamy (Walking Tall Part II) puts Estrada front-and-center as much as he can, assumedly realizing the soon-to-be-CHiPs star’s chiseled good looks are Fire’s most special of effects. It’s certainly not the lazy stock footage of terrified townspeople — some in horn-rimmed glasses, to show just how mismatched the material is. —Rod Lott

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In Italy, the crime rates have skyrocketed to such great heights, it’s enough to make a police commissioner throw his hands toward the sky in resignation and cry, “Mama mia!” What’s an authority figure to do? Well, there is always the idea of assembling a team of super cops who are not only crack shots, but aces on motorcycles — a Stunt Squad, if you will.

Cool concept, no? It’s an awesome idea. Unfortunately, director Domenico Paolella (Hate for Hate) fails to pay it off. He didn’t quite make that movie.

What he did make is more in line with the guns-a-blazin’ hallmark of Eurocrime. The criminals at Stunt Squad’s core employ a devious plan of rigging public phones with explosives, and once the devices are wired for maximum wreckage, gang leader/handsome man Valli (Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Antonio Margheriti’s Car Crash) enters a nearby booth, inserts a coin and dials an explosion. To Valli, the more collateral damage, the better.

That brand of ruthlessness results in the formation of the Stunt Squad, but don’t go look going for characterization, which begins and ends with its members donning matching yellow helmets. All but a modicum of vehicular mayhem ensues, to audiences’ sheer disappointment of what could have been. Paolella includes a make-good sequence at a disco club where the ladies lose their shirts, so viewers won’t lose their minds. —Rod Lott

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