No Safe Haven

No Safe Haven ★★★★

Wings Hauser’s Commando, a mea culpa if there ever was one as he was set to play Bennett, was quickly replaced, and wrote up this deeply stupid action slasher. Some truly amazing death scenes in it as Wings methodically picks off friends of a generic Latin American dictator that killed his family. Wings is also sober for this job, so the WTF one-liners are a bare minimum, and the sex scene he has isn’t disgusting. It’s quite a curiosity; unlike his later PM films, this is filmed and tonally in line with Golan-Globus, if not Schwarzenegger, but it allows time to give Hauser’s one-man army breathing room to frame his revenge as an act of personal crisis. It shouldn’t work, but it stands. Most amusing were his stint as a room service concierge and getting the Nazi strongman from Raiders as his arms dealer buddy. Released in West Germany the same year as RoboCop (though it went straight to video stateside two years later) and spotlights the absurd Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle.

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