Lt. Domenico Malacarne (Luc Merenda, Torso) is not the saintly officer of the law he appears to be. Although he’s technically on the side of all that is good, he doesn’t exactly play by the book to enforce it. And there’s plenty to enforce, given his department’s new hard-line policy against gangland violence, but how much the lieutenant adheres to it is another story.

From Eurocrime specialist Fernando Di Leo, Shoot First… Die Later clearly drew influence from William Friedkin’s The French Connection, one of the films repsonsible for igniting the Italians’ new approach to police pictures. Here, Di Leo approaches the material with a mix of noir and pulp that reaches for the ring of gritty realism while also reveling in the fact that it’s still a piece of crowd-pleasing cinema.

He mostly succeeds, much of it due to Merenda’s magnetic presence and the major subplot, examining the torn allegiance Lt. Malacarne’s father (Salvo Randone, My Dear Killer), also on the force, comes to feel toward his son. Sticking out is the use of a pet-toting resident as comic relief, primarily because his arc ends with a huge tonal shift (not to mention an act that would get PETA all riled).

On the plus side, bookending Shoot First are expert car chases. The first runs a breathtaking six minutes, partially through tiny Italian alleys, and is one of the all-time greats. If more people saw the film, they’d been inclined to agree. —Rod Lott

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Assume your best Trailer Guy voice: “The United States’ new first lady is a major bitch … and only Charles Bronson can protect her from … Assassination!”

In this rickety product from the Cannon Films assembly line, Death Wish master Bronson plays Secret Service agent Jay Killion (note that last name), who’s assigned to guard the life and body — upturned nose included — of Lara Craig, wife of the newly elected POTUS. That she is portrayed by frequent co-star Jill Ireland, then Bronson’s real-life wife, is the most interesting element of an otherwise routine actioner.

Killion takes his job very seriously, whereas Mrs. Craig could give a shit, assuming her haughty attitude of entitlement somehow makes her impervious to bullets. She slowly changes her tune when bad guys in their vicinity start playing tag with heat-seeking missiles. She and Killion fight; she and Killion flirt; she and Killion are trapped in what feels like Hart to Hart fan fiction.

One would expect a tighter film from Peter Hunt — director of the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and editor of many more 007 adventures — but Assassination is a royal mess, overstuffed with weaponry, a dune buggy chase and so. Many. Motorcycles. It’s one of the weakest, least engaging projects to emerge from the Bronson/Cannon partnership, so wrong that Bronson even quips, “I don’t want to die from a terminal orgasm.” Sorry, Chuck, but that sounds like exactly the way to go. —Rod Lott

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In (and as) Mean Johnny Barrows, Fred Williamson (Black Caesar) plays a decorated Vietnam solider dishonorably discharged from the service for punching a soldier who made him step on a live land mine. Back in California, Unemployed Johnny Barrows can’t seem to find a job. I don’t think it helps that all he wears are jeans so poorly acid-washed that it looks like he peed in them.

Eventually he gets tied up with the mob, hired to be a hit man for $100 grand and a piece of land. One of his assignments is to take out gangster Tony Da Vince, played by Roddy McDowall. After watching the Planet of the Apes star attempt to act like an Italian mobster, I now know where Dana Carvey found the inspiration for his Pistachio Disguisey character in The Master of Disguise; McDowall is more convincing kissing the curvy mob moll — and that’s saying something.

By the finale, Ambidextrous Johnny Barrows infiltrates a mob boss’ hideout with a shotgun in each hand. Minutes later, he’s defeating an opponent with a well-aimed Chinese star to the eye, making him Master Ninja Johnny Barrows.

Directed by Williamson himself, Mean Johnny Barrows also stars slumming white folk Stuart Whitman (Night of the Lepus) and that noted blaxploitation staple Elliot Gould (Ocean’s Eleven). The actioner ends as all actioners should: with the words “Dedicated to the veteran who traded his place on the front line for a place in the unemployment line – peace is hell” superimposed over a freeze frame of a honky bitch getting blown to smithereens. —Rod Lott

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I’m glad that New World Pictures gave Blade Runner baddie Rutger Hauer a legitimate shot at becoming a Stallone-sized action hero. I only wish he didn’t have to do it in a mullet and purple silk shirts. A better vehicle would have helped, too, for Wanted Dead or Alive is lacking in spark. If not quite DOA, it’s arguably more D than A.

A contemporary rejiggering of the same-named Steve McQueen television series of the late 1950s and early ’60s, the film focuses on Los Angeles bounty hunter Nick Randall (Hauer), the kind of loner who pockets a harmonica at all times and lives on a boat part-time, but uses both possessions to woo a med student (K-9‘s Mel Harris, in her movie debut).

After terrorist Malak Al Rahim (KISS kommander Gene Simmons, first seen disguised as a rabbi) blows up a theater screening Rambo: First Blood Part II, Randall is given one week and $250,000 to bring the guy down. He will, natch, but damned if it doesn’t feel like a real-time viewing. Action arrives in too-brief bursts, and to the tune of one of the worst scores the synth-soaked ’80s offered.

Wanted Dead or Alive often looks like a made-for-TV movie, which is weird when one considers how much grit director Gary Sherman was able to bring to Vice Squad four years earlier. Further holding it back from feeling cinematic is the third-billed presence of TV staple Robert Guillaume, who at least gets to fire off something he’d never be allowed as Benson: “The next time you decide to fuck me, Lipton, kiss me first!”

So inert is the story that I found myself more engrossed in a recurring restaurant location’s sign of “TRY OUR TASTY GRILLED BREAST OF CHICKEN.” I will give Sherman credit for the movie’s great ending, in which Randall blows Rahim’s noggin clean off with a stuffed-in-mouth grenade, then walks a few steps to sit down and play a few bars of “You Are My Sunshine” on the ol’ mouth organ. —Rod Lott

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Seven establishes many of what would become Andy Sidaris’ established trademarks, yet it’s evident this is an early effort, given that at one point, Sidaris shows us a pre- and post-sex scene, but not the sex scene itself! The Helen Reddy joke dates it, too.

In this crackerjack crime film, a syndicate is running rampant, resulting in six murders before the opening credits are even finished, including death-by-flaming-spear and homicide-via-crossbow-shot-by-passing-skateboarder. The cops call in noted hit man Drew (William Smith, Invasion of the Bee Girls) and assign him to kill seven mob figures (hence the title). Drew wants $7 million dollars (again, hence the title) to do so and rounds up various pals until he has his own team of seven (do you spot a trend here?) to take the bastards out. His team includes a cowboy, a professor, a stand-up comedian, a race car driver, a hot chick and a rotund Hawaiian with mad kung-fu skills.

Each of these characters is assigned his or her own miscreant to off, which they do in purely Sidaris ways, whether involving a helicopter, a rocket launcher, a motorcycle or an inflatable doll. Of particular note is when the Hawaiian busts his karate moves on several villains. “Hi-ya!” shouts one, to which our hero replies, “Hi-ya, my ass!”

But that’s not even the funniest bit of dialogue. No, that honor goes to a throwaway scene in an Orange Julius as a random fat guy approaches the counter:
Random Fat Guy: “I’ll have one!”
Orange Julius Employee: “One of what?”
Random Fat Guy: “One of everything!”

While Seven is far from the most polished of Sidaris’ efforts (the boom mike makes three cameos), there’s no denying its pulp pleasures from frame one. Plus, it contains the only Silly-String-as-foreplay scene I’ve laid eyes on, and two Playboy vets in its cast: H.O.T.S.’ Susan Kiger, who gets naked, and Terminal Island’s Barbara Leigh, who doesn’t — say what?!? —Rod Lott

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