This is How Movies Should Be Made

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

When the evil terrorist Mustapha Ahmed (Zamora) and his sidekick Eddy Williams (Wayne) escape military imprisonment and steal a high-tech, high-powered gun, All hell breaks loose. Hansen (Spinell) calls in his best agent, a man named Mike Thompson (Waldron) to bring Ahmed and Williams to justice. Thompson initially balks at the assignment, but when he sees his chance to get revenge against Williams - who he served with in Vietnam (?) and who wronged him then - Thompson jumps at the chance. To complete his mission he teams up with Corie Parker (Tanner, whose only other credit is fellow AIP vehicle Center of the Web), a pretty government agent, as well as Pappy, a not-so-pretty mercenary with a larger than life personality and joie d'vivre. Will the three heroes rise to the occasion and stop the baddies? Find out today...1989. Will the wonders birthed in that magical year never cease to issue forth? Here, the classic AIP team of David A. Prior, William Zipp and David Winters bring us Rapid Fire, not to be confused with Rapid Fire (1992). This Rapid Fire stars not Brandon Lee, but one Ron Waldron as Mike Thompson. Somehow, we can see the excitement on your faces. Waldron tries for Clint Eastwood in his speech and mannerisms, but comes off as a confused cross between David Heavener and Robert Hays (both no strangers to AIP, interestingly. Prior must have a type he's looking for). He almost gets into a barfight in perhaps the same bar as seen in Hell on the Battleground (1989). Thompson has a truck named Rollin' Thunder, and, as if that wasn't enough, his license plate is "FLEX". His vehicle contains a lot of text. But even with all that firepower, he can't compare to Pappy.Unquestionably, Douglas Harter as Pappy steals the movie. It clearly belongs to him. A longtime AIP mainstay, here he finally gets some time in the sun, and he clearly relishes it. Luckily, so does the audience. Pappy is a large, robust man who is bald but has a long beard. He's usually wearing sunglasses and smokes cigars. His favorite activity is hanging out in his pool, drinking cans of Miller Lite while surrounded by bikini-clad babes. He has great taste in casualwear, and he doesn't take life too seriously. Yet, he always gets the job done and you can depend on him. We really grew to love Pappy. There needs to be more people like him not just in movies, but in real life.Countering the ebullience of Pappy, there is a sad undercurrent to Rapid Fire, as it was fan favorite Joe Spinell's last movie. There are credits honoring his memory both before and after the film. Unlike Operation Warzone (1988), he does stand up here, so it's not solely a sit-down role, thankfully. Spinell was a great talent and will surely be missed. He brought uniqueness, life, and interest to every role he played. It truly is a shame he left us before his time.But back to the silliness at hand, the main baddie, Williams, resembles noted pervert and scumbag Anthony Weiner. At least towards the beginning of the movie. Somehow, after repeated flashbacks and paranoid dream sequences, he goes more towards the Heavener side of things, confusingly, just like our hero Mike Thompson. I guess the Heavener look was big back in '89.As usual with AIP, it seems a lot of time and care went into the music. The great Steve McClintock handles it once again, and he delivers some radio-ready songs that were as good as any of the hits of the day. His "C'Mon (My Hometown)" out John Cougar Mellencamps John Cougar Mellencamp, and Bob Harvey's "The Shack", well...it out Bob Segers Bob Seger. The songs enrich the movie and ignore the low budget. Sure, there's a lot of shooting, car stunts, Prerequisite Torture of the hero and whatnot, and even the heartbreaking passing of Joe Spinell, but we can always go back to "My Hometown". That seems to be the message, and it seems to fit.Featuring a very bizarre, totally out-of-left-field denouement, Rapid Fire is more AIP madness you have to love and enjoy.

This is a pretty silly movie that looks like it took them about 3 weeks to write the script, hire the actors, film it and then edit it. In spite of how unbelievably bad this movie is, there is one fine performance by this tall blond that transcends the movie's lameness. Next time you see this movie, check out the blond in the pool scene. She gives a heartfelt and outstanding performance that seems out of place in a trashy movie like this. The credits only list her as Sally, but her performance will leave you feeling as if Sally is an old friend that you haven't heard from in years and wish you knew better. It's a real pity that the actress hasn't done more because I'd love to see what other richly nuanced performances are lurking around inside of her. I mean, in this movie, when she delivered her line, I really believed that there was a phone call for Pappy! You don't get acting performances with that much integrity in movies now-a-days!

I don't know exactly what it is, but I am drawn to the films of David A. Prior like moths to a flame. The frequently air on late-night television in my area, and I watch them. They tend to be of two varieties: horrible or decent. Occasionally, one transcends the decent label and becomes very good, such as `White Fury,' `Night Wars,' `Center of the Web,' or `Lock n Load.' But I usually go into the movies braced for another `Mankillers' or `Deadly Prey' and cross my fingers and pray that I don't get dealt another `Operation Warzone.' When `Rapid Fire' started up, I feared the worst, as the film begins with a really bad scene aboard a US ship where an assassin breaks a terrorist out of jail and takes out a battalion of navy and marine troops. I groaned. But then the film's tone changed, the story improved, and everything seemed so much better. Well, almost everything.As soon as the bad opening action sequence is over, we get the brunt of the story. Shady US government agents kidnap former agent Mike Thompson (Ron Waldron) because he is the only person that can nail the assassin, Eddy Williams (Michael Wayne), because they have a past history: Mike once served under Eddy in the military and Eddy went nuts and tried to murder his brave soldier. Mike can't do this alone, though. He falls for a lovely agent, Corle (Dawn Tanner), who decides to go against her own superiors and help Mike with his mission because she wants the escaped terrorist dead. Mike also enlists the help of another former mercenary and someone with many connections, Pappy (Douglas Harter). The three of them need to find Eddy's hideout or flush him out in the open. Their biggest obstacle is Eddy's weapon, a super-powered gun with quick-firing, armor-piercing bullets. Most of the movie is quick and entertaining. Prior works most of his action scenes (again, not including the opener) really well given his tight budget. The film's critical problem is in Ron Waldron. I don't know what it is exactly, but his acting seems very wooden. It's probably the way he spoke his lines that I didn't like. He sounded like he was trying to imitate Marc Singer, which would be fine if the words really were coming out of the mouth of Singer. The rest of the cast is good. Wayne brings something to his villain that you don't see too often: fear. Eddy thinks Mike is dead, but upon hearing news to the contrary, he wigs out and becomes overtly paranoid for the rest of the movie. He even has interesting dream sequences to illustrate his fear, and I have to commend Prior for these unique scenes that a villain rarely gets to display. I didn't particularly like Tanner's role, but that is not because her ability was off but because her character seemed like a forced love interest. Harter is the movie's pride and joy. He's a Prior regular, and it is always fun seeing him in a more extended role. He's the best character in the film, and I could tell that Prior and actor-writer William Zipp had a lot of fun writing his scenes. True, seeing Harter in swimming trunks being kissed by women in the middle of his pool was something I could have gone my whole life without seeing, but at least this scenes ended on a really hilarious note, changing the tone of the film from Too Serious to Tongue-in-Cheek, which was greatly needed. Still, the unappealing main character determines the end score. Zantara's score: 5 out of 10.