Kill Zone Reviews

A Vietnam movie starring exploitation favorite David Carradine, KILL ZONE is undistinguished on all fronts. Cigar-chomping maverick Colonel Wiggins (David Carradine) defies his superiors by mounting an unauthorized mission into Cambodia. Its purpose: to destroy a small railroad that's being used to transport Viet Cong supplies. War-weary Captain Holland (Robert Youngblood) and his platoon, frustrated with fighting the war halfway and determined to avenge their fallen buddies, take on the unofficial assignment. While Holland and his men seek out and destroy the supply tracks, Wiggins has problems on base: South Vietnamese Captain Thuy (Archie Adamos) is threatening to make trouble over the death of another Vietnamese officer, whom Wiggins' right hand, Lieutenant Lazaro (Vic Trevino), killed as a suspected traitor. Meanwhile, curvaceous Waranya (Vivian Velez), who wears a fetching fringed bra and sarong ensemble, welcomes the Americans to her remote Cambodian village. With the help of the villagers, the Americans locate and destroy first the railroad, then the main Viet Cong supply depot, sustaining heavy casualties. Thuy--who has a spy in Holland's platoon--uncovers the operation and intends to expose it. Wiggins goes berserk: he kills Thuy with a ceremonial sword and leads his men to Cambodia to join Holland at Waranya's village. There he orders all the villagers killed as collaborators. Horrified by Wiggins' racist brutality, Holland turns on his former commanding officer and kills him. Or so he thinks--after Holland and his men leave, the maddened Wiggins rises like a bogeyman. A cheaply made action picture by Filipino exploitation veteran Cirio Santiago, whose career is now in its fourth decade, KILL ZONE capitalizes on the Philippines' resemblance to Vietnam. Poorly written and monotonously directed, KILL ZONE is an undistinguished effort, even by the undemanding standards of direct-to-video productions. Santiago, who has made dozens of low-budget horror and action films, has never mastered the art of making cheap films look as though they cost more than they did, and KILL ZONE's post-production dubbing is particularly jarring: hollow, affectless screams turn the battle scenes into unintentional farce. Nevertheless, Santiago is a prolific filmmaker and had a total of five pictures in release in 1993: KILL ZONE, LIVE BY THE FIST, FATAL ANGEL, FIREHAWK and AGAINST THE ODDS. (Violence.)