Directed by: Ricou Browning
Starring: Richard Jaeckel, Ron Slinker, Lloyd Bochner, Joie Chitwood, John Agar, Ted Vollrath, Rance Howard, Courtney Brown, Joan Murphy, Luke Halpin, Suhaila, Billy Blue River, Templeton Fox, Jack Belt, Beverly Shade.
Buy/Watch Here: YouTube
I first spotted this movie on the top shelf at my local video shop back in the early 80s and quickly grabbed the case, only to be told that somebody had nicked the actual video itself so I couldn’t take it out on rental! Two decades later a friend (who may have been the guy who nicked it, for all I know) lent me a copy. Was it worth the wait? Ask Godot.
What we have here is what Ironside could have been like if Raymond Burr had been a badass motherfudger who had double-barrelled shotguns fixed to each arm of his wheelchair. Shot in Florida by people who should have been shot in Florida, it’s about a gang of drug smugglers whose main enforcer is the ruthless Mr. No Legs, so called not because he drinks too much, but because, having lost said limbs in an explosion, he now wheels round town wasting cops and fellow crims alike from a motorised and heavily tooled-up wheelchair. Just try nicking this bad boy’s disabled parking space and see what happens!
Meanwhile, honest cops Ted Vollrath – who has the biggest moustache in the precinct – and Richard Jaeckel (never-aging star of The Green Slime) investigate the death of the former’s sister, which eventually leads them to uncover a crooked cop who is feeding vital info to Bochner. This also puts their lives in danger from the man in the deadly wheelchair…
It’s bad movie gold, full of dodgy 70s fashions and horrible song interludes from a gruesome easy-listening duo called Mercy (who wouldn’t have appeared at all if they’d lived up to their name). There’s some cool dialogue though; spotting a black guy in mile-high platforms with matching earrings, Jaeckel comments, “He could be a pusher…” to which his partner wryly replies, “He’s a pusher all right, but what he’s pushing you stroke, you don’t smoke!” Right on, brother.