Please don't spend money on this.

Let's be realistic.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The Executioner, Part II (1984) * (out of 4) Lieutenant O'Malley (Christopher Mitchum) must investigate a group of killings where it seems rapists and murderers are being executed by someone wearing a mask. Before long O'Malley starts to think that he might know who is behind it and there (shock) might be a connection to Vietnam.THE EXECUTIONER, PART II is a really, really awful film. It's a really awful movie on just about every level but thankfully it starts off campy enough to where you'll be able to get a few laughs out of it. The opening sequences in Vietnam are just downright laughable as I'm going to guess that they were actually filmed in California. The film really picks up through the first twenty-minutes or so because we see the masked avenger beating thugs over the head and best of all putting grenades on them, which is followed by the same stock footage use of an explosion.For some strange reason the movie really falls apart during the final hour. Whereas the opening moments were campy and funny, the rest of the film is pretty darn straight and extremely boring. I'm really not sure why they decided to focus more on the police and the investigation because this really slows the film down and brings it to a crashing halt. Yes, the entire movie is pretty bad on a technical level but at least you can have some fun and laugh at the opening stuff.Mitchum is mildly entertaining in his role and we've also got Aldo Ray in a supporting bit. Getting to see these two actors is always a plus but they're sadly in a pretty limp movie that doesn't have much going for it.

In Vietnam 1970, there were a bunch of American guys who were fighting and trying to survive. Now, back in America, there is a killer on the loose who calls himself The Executioner. He is no ordinary killer, though, but a vigilante: a man who kills criminals with guns, broken glass shards and live grenades.This film was directed by James Bryan. Not sure who that is, actually. And why is it "part 2"? No idea.The exploitation nature of this film shows up in the first ten minutes, when a group of guys brutally rapes a woman on a rooftop while the neighbors just sort of watch and consider whether or not they should help the woman. Luckily, they are stopped by the Executioner! There is a scene that is a bad advertisement for Miller High Life, with two guys fixing a car and talking about how fast time goes by. Then, in the middle of guy time, some thugs show up to steal their tires and a fight breaks out, complete with sound effects and a song ripped off from "Shaft".There's a visible poster for "Hot Teenage Assets" and another film... but if you know why, you are a better detective than I am.Thoroughly entertaining film with bad dialogue, cheesy explosions and the inevitable Vietnam flashback. A must see? No. But pretty decent for what it is.

Now, I watched this on a Grindhouse collection DVD, in no way shape or form was I expecting it to be good. I wanted a bad movie, and I thought I knew what I was getting into. However, the poster lied to me. When I first saw the mustachioed police sergeant I thought I was going to get the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage".Instead I got about 3 scenes of actual executioning and the majority about some teenage brat pack reject who spends the movie getting high and giving into peer pressure and becoming a hooker for heroin. Through this she effectively became the main character, and in her duty as protagonist, she cries while her friend yells at her about how easy it is to have sex with strangers for money and why she's a loser for not wanting to do such. She eventually gets kidnapped and raped, oh joy, and finally ends up accomplishing almost nothing in what felt like three hours.Now, the executioning. There were some glorious scenes of grenades and greasers flash mobbing a deli. There was aforementioned mustache-man running into homeless people and boxes for no reason, there were random terribly choreographed fight scenes. This is about a total of 15 minutes, or so it feels. The majority of the movie is either the girl having a moral dilemma about how uncool and unhigh she will be if she doesn't allow herself to be raped by a mafia sadist, or Vietnam flashbacks.Oh, and there's some random news anchor who talks like a gypsy and looks like a poor man's Fran Drescher. The pointlessness of her character, versus her screen time is astonishing. The only way you can really grasp how unimportant she is is to actually watch.Stuff blew up, but not enough. Not enough to justify the hour and fifteen minutes of my life I dedicated to this viewing. Too much rape, not enough vigilante murder sprees.

Probably made for less than Seagal's hairpiece, this is one wild flick. A masked vigilante dubbed The Executioner by the press is running around Los Angeles. Det. Roger O'Malle (Chris Mitchum) is on the case and begins to suspect his best friend and fellow Vietnam vet Mike (Antoine John Mottet) is the killer. A subplot involves a gangster nicknamed The Tattooed Man, who has lured O'Malle's drug addicted daughter into the world of prostitution. Naturally, all of these plot lines meet in a big jumbled mess.Now this is more like it! Bryan's LADY STREET FIGHTER nearly killed me with tedium. This blows it out of the water in terms of entertainment, thanks mostly to some dubbing that appears to have been done by the same people who helped Bryan on DON'T GO IN THE WOODS. If you've seen that film, you know how funny this can be. Thankfully, LADY star Renee Harmon continues to dub her own voice with her zick acczent. Aldo Ray pops up in a few scenes and it is obvious he was shot alone (you never see him on screen with anyone else, only in close ups). The film is technically a sequel to something that never existed, unless they were trying to cash in on Duke Mitchell's mob flick (unlikely) of the early 70s George Peppard flick by the same name (highly unlikely).On a side note, this film may mark the turning point in Mitchum's career where he went from semi-coherent b-movies to all out madness. In the next few years, he would make insane movies like American COMMANDOS (1985), FINAL SCORE (1986), SFX RETALIATOR (1987) and FACELESS (1988).