Three Days to a Kill is not a movie where Steven Seagal plays an ex-CIA or whatever in Eastern Europe, but instead is about a US ambassador getting kidnapped ahead of a big speech, and Navy big wig Chuck Connors calling in ex-CIA guy in Chicago Fred Williamson to get the ambassador back. Williamson needs a demolition expert if he's going to do this right--whatever this is--so he has bank robber Bo Svenson sprung from prison so he can help with the job. Turns out the guy holding the ambassador hostage is none other than drug cartel head Henry Silva. What is his connection to sexy dancer Yolanda (or as Williamson calls her, "Yo-LANN-da")? And can they trust her?
It's difficult to say how much we have here beyond Williamson and some of the other cast members, but the question is, how much does it matter? No one props ups scenes on his mere presence alone the way Williamson does, and we get enough of him here for that to really count. Yes, the plot is uneven with some dead spots in the middle, and the way they treat Yolanda's character at the end is pretty rough; but when you're coming for a late 80s/early 90s Williamson flick, this has enough of what you want to make it work. I feel like in this day and age, that counts for a lot.
Beyond the fact that this is 22 films for Williamson now at the DTVC, this is also the eighth film directed by him that we've covered here. While that still puts him behind a lot of directors here on the site, other than Albert Pyun, he's not behind many of them by a lot. That for me is one of the biggest things about him, it's not just that he makes the movie often by just being in it, often he's the one making the movie, which is a reason why he's one of the greatest DTV stars ever. If you check him out on Tubi, he has a ton of stuff on there, so not only do I not have any excuse to get him in more posts, but no one has any excuse--at least not here in the US--to not catch more of his films.
Initially I thought this was my first Chuck Connors film on here, and I had this whole thing lined up about how I watched The Rifleman with my dad growing up, but it turns out he was on here before in Last Flight to Hell with Reb Brown, and I covered all of those points then--including his short stint with the Boston Celtics. If you look at his bio, he has a lot of DTV films around this time, many of which haven't been covered by us, but have by our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum. Unfortunately not as many of them are available on Tubi or YouTube, so I need to find some way of tracking them down. I don't know if I'd say Connors is good in this, but what does good or bad look like when it's Chuck Connors in a Fred Williamson late 80s/early 90s DTV flick? Exactly, we're just happy he's there.
Two other big names in this, Bo Svenson and Henry Silva, have made a couple appearances here on the site before, but for some reason neither had been tagged like Chuck Connors had. I'm not really sure what prompts me to tag an actor or not when I'm writing a post. Often if it's just their first post, I won't tag them, even if they're really big--which doesn't explain Chuck Connors, but I didn't say it had to make sense. Both of these guys, like Connors, had a pretty prolific late 80s/early 90s DTV run that I haven't really scratched the surface on yet. I think, though, that the appearances in these movies by guys like this was another reason why we enjoyed them so much. They added an extra flavor to the proceedings that bolstered the films' charm. While many of the issues plaguing modern DTV are things we can blame the industry on, I think this is one they can't do anything about. In the late 80s/early 90s, we had a cadre of great actors from the past who came into these films and delivered professional performances. Svenson isn't as old as the others, so he's more in the Williamson category; but guys like Connors, Silva, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Klaus Kinski--among many others--could be counted on to show up, deliver on the scenes they're in, and remind us of who they were in the older stuff we remembered seeing them in as we were growing up. The equivalents today would be a Bruce Willis or a Robert De Niro, but it doesn't seem to work the same with them as it did with these guys back then. Is it really just that those older guys cared more?
Finally, one thing I love about a Williamson-directed film, is when he includes shots like these of the local area he's shooting in. How do you not love the idea of 2 all beef hot dogs with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda for $2.79? I mean, even if you're a vegetarian, the concept still has to be great, right? The thing is though, this is just a special, you can't just get this every day--though the permanence of the sign leads us to believe differently--which makes me wonder what this normally would set us back? $3.79? $4.79? It has to be a ".79" so the left digit bias kicks in. "What, you want $3 for 2 all beef hot dogs, with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda? Sorry, that's a little too rich for my blood." But set it at $2.79, and I think, not only is that not $3, but significantly cheaper than $3, so when I pass that sign, say while I'm hip-deep in a chase scene, I'm sufficiently swayed to stop in and try them out for lunch.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is only on YouTube, which means you can watch it, but it really needs to be on one of the major streaming sites with a higher-quality version. This isn't anything that would make a Williamson top five list, but it's a fun time between him and the rest of the cast involved.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101253
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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