Taylor Lacher

Baker's Hawk -- Baker's Hawk

The script of Mr. Majestyk was Elmore Leonard's attempt to concentrate on the plight of Chicano migrant workers, instead the film that hit screens was extensively reshaped into a standard Charles Bronson vehicle. Hoping to make a living as a watermelon farmer, Battle-weary Vietnam veteran Vince Majestyk (Bronson) settles down in rural Colorado. Despite his new-found pacifism, Majestyk can't seem to stay out of trouble, and he lands in jail, where he plots a breakout engineered by Mob boss Frank Renda (Al Lettieri). Majestyk finds himself the main target of the Mob after offering to bring in Renda in exchange for his own freedom. It is bad enough when the crooks begin roughing up Majestyk's field hands; but when they ruthlessly machine-gun his entire melon crop, they've gone to far. Teaming up with Chicano labor activist Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal), Majestyk decides to track down the mobsters one by one and mete out retribution.

This quirky psychological thriller involves a quintet of weird kids who stumble into the luxurious winter retreat of a wealthy patriarch (Gene Evans) and his arrogant guests. Little do the effete vacationers realize that the children are escapees from an asylum for the criminally insane -- a fact they realize only after their doom has been sealed. The only known film from director Sean MacGregor (released theatrically as People Toys), this is a seldom-seen but thoroughly satisfying horror sleeper with a sardonic sense of morality, taking great delight in knocking off Evans' circle of decadent snobs in graphic and innovative ways (one guest is joined in the bath by piranhas; another is pummeled with chains in a creepy still-photo montage). Known also to some drive-in venues as The Horrible House on the Hill, no doubt as part of a double-bill with Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

When a team of undercover narcotics officers come under attack by a mysterious serial killer, the police enlist the help of karate champion Matt Logan in an effort to bring an end to the terror.