The Devastator has Rick Hill as a former special forces guy who's called to a small California town after a former Army buddy that lives there dies. Turns out there's a lot more afoot, as a baddie is growing weed there in the Green Triangle, and he runs the town with an iron fist, including the sheriff, who's complicit. Well Hill ain't complicit, so he rounds up a bunch of his old crew, and they go back to take on those dastardly weed growers. They won't know what hit them!
This is a ton of fun. Hill is exactly the hero you want him to be, the baddies are sufficiently bad, the old Army crew are sufficiently colorful, and the action does what it needs to do. We get plenty of stuntmen shimmying to death from machine gun fire, falling from high heights, or flying through the air after explosions go off behind them. On top of all that, we have a 79-minute run time. That's right, when you're 19 minutes in, you only have an hour left! They just don't make 'em like this anymore, but at one time they did, and we're fortunate that they're on free streamers like Tubi.
We're only at 11 films for Cirio H. Santiago here on the site, which isn't great compared to some of the other directors we've covered. I count 20 between 1981's Firecracker and 1994's Stranglehold that we could review that we haven't yet. That means we have a lot of work to do, but with how much fun his movies are, and the indelible impact they've left on the world of low-budget action cinema, that work will be well worth it. And of the ones we've covered, this is one of my favorites. Santiago doesn't play around, he gets in and gets out in 79 minutes, and doesn't waste any of that time, either giving us action scenes or plot exposition scenes that lead to action scenes soon after. Santiago is one of the best to ever do it for a reason, and this film is a great example of that.
If our Santiago tags are lacking, we're only at seven films now for Rick Hill, but when I look at his IMDb bio, I don't see many more that we can do for him, maybe another six? While he may not qualify for one of our high-tag clubs, he could get Hall of Fame consideration, because he's one of the great leads of low-budget action. I think this is right up there with Deathstalker for one of his best movies, Hill just carries it from start to finish, he's a leading man you have to root for, and it's so much fun to see him blowing up baddies. Whether it's Santiago, or another B-movie stalwart like Fred Olen Ray, Hill seems to understand what's asked of him in these films, and he delivers it. I'm going to do my best to try to get the rest of his DTV flicks up here, because the more Rick Hill the better.
In 1986, I don't know if we could've seen the current US, where many states, including California, have legalized recreational cannabis, but had we had any sense back then, we'd have seen how making it illegal leads to this underground economy where crime lords like the baddie in this film can have power and kill people. No one should be dying so people can smoke weed. And even with the legalization on the state level, it's still illegal federally, which affects where and how it can be grown and sold. Here in Philadelphia, for example, it's not legal in our state, but it is decriminalized in the city, so people can go to New Jersey and buy it there then bring it back. Why? All that tax revenue is leaving the state. But the question is, if it was legalized in this state, would we have nice rural family farms growing it, or would it be a baddie like in this film, only instead of an illegal cartel he'd have a massive corporation, a legalized form of cartel if you will (and if you won't, that's okay too). I guess what I'm asking is, in a world of legalized weed, is there still a place for someone like The Devastator to come in and have to sort our evil growers?
Finally, would you look at that beauty! A vintage Detroit Tigers cap! And in the image above that we have a rumpled San Francisco Giants one. In addition to those two, a baddie wears a New York Mets cap, and I swore another wore a Yankees one, but it was blink-and-you'll-miss-it, and I kept missing it. Baseball caps don't really look like that anymore, which I'm okay with, I prefer the modern '47 Brand Clean-Up style, and I have it in a variety of teams. When I started going to more games in 2018, my plan was to get a cap for every ballpark I visited, both Major and Minor leagues, but at $30 a pop, I realized that was too expensive, so now I do souvenir cup sodas, since I'll need a beverage anyway. I also collect them when I see other sports, so I have a bunch of them now. If you're curious, the Mets and Yankees do the best job with them, it's like they're competing with one another to see whose is better. The worst? The Philadelphia Phillies. Ever since they made it to the World Series in 2022--made it, not won it--they changed the style from the standard, shorter and wider version, to something that's taller and thinner. Why, I don't know, I guess they wanted to make it harder for me to stack them with all the others I have, because they made it to the World Series in 2022, not won it.
And with that, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi here in the States, among other streamers. If you're looking for some fun, low-budget action that gets you in and out in 80 minutes, this will do the trick. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the Bulletproof Cirio H. Santiago Countdown, where yours truly did a write-up on Dune Warriors! The link to the site is on the left sidebar.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089023
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