Biff bang boom it’s Burl, ha ha! I’ve got a review of a
vengeance picture for you – and not just any vengeance, but, as in the
delightful Rolling Vengeance, the
vengeance we’re talking about here is purely Canadian vengeance! The picture is
called Bullies, and whatever other
faults it may possess, faulty advertising is not one of them, for the movie
certainly contains no shortage of bullies! And nobody likes bullies, ha ha!
The bullies are a family of louts called the Cullens, who
lord it over the other denizens of their small British Columbia ski resort
town! They’re both rich and violent, though neither condition is properly
explained! At the beginning of the picture, they use their big truck to run an
elderly couple right off the road, and some time later, a city family who were
related to the old couple (but don’t realize they were murdered) come to take
over their shop and house!
The city family has problems of their own even before they
arrive in this benighted hamlet! The mom has a teenage son, but has divorced
his father and remarried a rather milquetoast individual! The stepdad and the
son don’t really get along, and after the nasty Cullen family begin their campaign
of cityfolk intimidation the gulf widens further, since the son believes his
stepdad to simply be a wimp!
Naturally the son befriends a Wise Old Indian, and I thought
for sure this character would either be killed or reappear at a critical moment
in the climax! I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but it turns out that
neither happens – the Cullens burn up his totem poles and administer a savage punchdown,
and he beats feet like any normal human would! I also thought maybe the craven
townsfolk would rise up and help, but they don’t!
But you know who does help out, strangely enough? Thick Wilson!
Ha ha, that’s right, the co-star of Sex With the Stars and Strange Brew appears as the town sheriff! He doesn’t want anything to do
with policing the Cullens until the end of the picture, when he decides to
heroically take a stand for about thirty seconds before they blast him to
kingdom come! Ha ha, I’ll tell you, I sure wasn’t expecting Thick Wilson to
appear! Plenty of other people maybe, but not Thick Wilson!
Anyway, the Cullens get really nasty before the movie’s
over, stooping so low as to perform a rape on the mom! I really dislike those
sorts of scenes in movies, but here at least it’s filmed as tastefully as it
could be! Still pretty unsavory, though! That’s enough for the son, and he goes
on a vengeance hunt, giving the Cullens a taste of their own nasty medicine!
And the stepdad, who has been captured, helps out, proving he’s not the wimp
everyone thought he was!
Ha ha, this is a violent picture, to be sure! There’s a
nasty burnup, an impalement and some pokings! Naturally popguns come into play
as well! But this is only the last part of the picture; the first hour or so is
mainly a lot of chatter set against the mountains of B.C.! Paul “Humongous” Lynch, the director, is not
as good at this sort of thing as his contemporary and countryman, William Fruet,
who made a Canadian Vengeance picture called Baker County U.S.A.! (He also made Spasms, ha ha!) Nevertheless, Bullies
is a little better than you might expect it to be, and the vengeance itself is
pretty satisfying! I give it two hood antler racks!
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