No Safe Haven (1987).

“Nobody killed my family! They were executed.”

Directed by Ronnie Rondell Jr.

Written by Wings Hauser and Nancy Locke

Starring Wings Hauser, Robert Tessier, Branscombe Richmond, and Robert Ahola

1. (The Stage)

When the Los Angeles Hawks fail to throw their bid to get to the Super Bowl (or Silver Bowl? The movie doesn’t even know), some drug runners who had a lot riding on the game murder the star quarterback Buddy Harris and his family. Unfortunately for them, they left one brother alive. Clete Harris, who has been living in Honduras running a Peace Corps office, comes home to get revenge (and chase some skirts).

2. (The Good)

As you can tell by reading the plot summary, this film is bad. Real bad. Fortunately, there’s one great thing about this film - the performance by Branscombe Richmond. I knew him as Bobby Sixkiller (still one of the greatest TV names ever) from Renegade, but here he’s chewing the fucking scenery as Manuel, a psychopathic, ineffective henchman for the Bolivian mob. It looks like he’s having a blast playing this over-the-top character and he was definitely the bright spot of this film.

I also have to give a shout out to the kill scenes in this film. Wings Hauser doesn’t just come back to L.A. to kill people, he comes to kill them creatively. The setups might not make a whole lot of sense, but they are amusing. He douses one criminal with lighter fluid, lights him up, locks him on a hotel balcony, and gives the man a choice - either burn alive on the balcony or jump to your death.

3. (The Bad)

So…the real New England Patriots vs. the fake Los Angeles Hawks.

Where do I start? From the very first scene, you know what you’re in for. There’s a car chase in which the speed of the film has been altered - I’m sure they wanted to make the cars look a little bit faster, but everything just looks like it’s in fast-forward. A man being chased by Bobby Sixkiller jumps into a cement mixing truck (the slowest possible ride). He clips the back door of a van, which promptly explodes, and then continues to drive into a bus full of people, blowing himself and everyone on the bus into bits…and then this scene is never mentioned again. There’s weird stuff like this scattered all throughout the film. There’s a full scene in which a boom mic (and gaffer hand) are seen hovering at the top of the frame. Another where a battle scene that is taking place at night suddenly turns to day for no apparent reason. And the big game? It’s both the Super Bowl and the fictitious “Silver Bowl”.

Wings Hauser (who I normally like) is terrible in this film. He shows absolutely no range, even in spots that need to be heavy, like when he finds out his family has been murdered. At the funeral, he looks like he’s just bored and ready to leave, and when he’s killing bad guys, it feels like he’s just doing it out of obligation. It’s also hard to have sympathy for the character when the first thing he does (once he lands in L.A.) is bang a blonde in a light-hearted scene just to get some tits in the film. That scene also features the line, “My daddy was a farmer…a melon farmer.” as she pops her breasts out. The film drags to a halt when he’s chasing skirts and doesn’t at all feel like Clete had his priorities straight.

4. (The Ugly)

Dialogue that could never be uttered today rears its ugly head in one scene in which a female says to two football players, “I’m so sick of your cowboy consciousness and your negro arrogance.”

The way the mother gets shot in the head - that’s pretty ugly. One thing is for sure, when it comes to death scenes, No Safe Haven doesn’t shy away from the gore.

5. (The End)

This movie was clearly written as a vanity project for Wings and unfortunately, it doesn’t show off his talents. He’s stiff and seems to sleepwalk through the film. It’s the only movie ever filmed by Ronnie Rondell Jr., who primarily worked as a legendary stuntman in Hollywood, and that shows. I wouldn’t recommend watching the whole film, but I would recommend checking out some of the kills. It also ends with a fist pumping freeze-frame, which I can never get enough of.