White Fire (1984)

This is one I've been meaning to do for some time, especially after it came up on the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode of the podcast I did with Ty and Brett, so when I saw it was available on Tubi, I had to make it happen. In addition to us, this is a complete the triangle film, because Ty and Brett at Comeuppance and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have done this too; plus our friend Jon at the After Movie Diner did a great review of on it on Letterboxd.

White Fire has Ginty as the brother of a sister and brother diamond smuggling duo. After they rob the wrong people, the sister ends up dead, the problem is, they were looking to do a big score for the huge White Fire diamond, and the sister was a big part of that. That's when Ginty, drowning his sorrows in booze at a local bar, meets a nice woman who, it just so happens, looks enough like his sister that, with a little plastic surgery, could pass for her. As luck would have it, there's a woman who does that kind of thing, and before you know it the sister is back. At the same time, the baddies have hired Williamson to figure out what's going on. Will Ginty and crew prevail and get the famed White Fire diamond?

That synopsis doesn't sound too crazy, does it? The movie's actually crazier, which makes it fantastic. Ty and Brett said on the pod it was so crazy that that made it a 4-star movie. The whole sister and brother thing is beyond a trip. Before the sister dies, she's skinny dipping in their pool, and when she gets out, Ginty is there checking her out, and he keeps her towel away from her as the two of them kid around. What? And then, he's falling for the new woman before they turn her into the sister, so after the fact he starts hooking up with her. Really? Sure, why not, right? Beyond that, we have a big white diamond that burns people's hands, Fred Williamson as a fantastic baddie, and a woman who lives in this beautiful commune with myriad beautiful women that performs plastic surgery for rich criminals. It's the cinematic equivalent of just grabbing everything out of the fridge and throwing it in a blender--but then finding out the mixture is actually kind of good. Maybe you don't drink that concoction all the time, but as a one-off in 1984, it works.

We're still catching up on our Gintage, as this is only our fifth film of his on the site, but boy, what a doozy for a fifth one. What did he think when he was told his character was hooking up with his sister? My hunch is, because the actress was very attractive, it wasn't a problem for him--in fact he may have even had them write that in! There's also the sense of him as the great DTV leading man he was, as, throughout all the silliness in this, he's always playing it straight and navigating it all to give us a solid action hero. What's interesting is, out of the five films of his we've done, this is the third that was released in 1984, after The Exterminator 2 and Warrior of the Lost World. He also had a TV series come out at that same year, Hawaiian Heat, and he probably thought this was it, he was out of the low-budget movie world and into big-time network TV. Alas, the show only lasted one season, and he went on to be one of the first true DTV stars, perhaps a pioneering role he would've preferred not to have, but one we definitely appreciate.

Our other DTVC Hall of Famer is the great Fred Williamson, who plays the guy the baddies call on to take Ginty and crew down. It's a fantastic part for him, he's just chewing up scenery in various Mediterranean location, fully armed and mustachioed, exactly the part you'd want if he's not the hero. This is also the second time we've seen him with Ginty in a European production, the other being Warrior of the Lost World. We know Williamson has his rule that he can't be killed and he needs to get the girl at the end, so this tries to split the difference with him not being the hero, and I think they do a good job with it. We'll probably be seeing more Williamson soon with another one of his directed films, but it's nice to see him here as just a costar in among this cinematic craziness.

As wacky as this movie is, it has a charm and fun quality to it that makes it work, and I wonder why that is compared to the modern DTV flick that seldom works on this level. The 80s element is one part for sure; and Ginty and Williamson are always great; but it's also like the thrown-together nature of it works in a way that makes modern thrown-together movies feel more crass, if that makes sense. I mean, couldn't Adkins and Dolph work for this, with Adkins in the Ginty role and Dolph in the Williamson role? And then we add in a beautiful woman to be the sister, and have Adkins hook up with her? Just typing this out, I see myself here writing the review killing it for being so ridiculous. This film is some kind of alchemy that can't be recreated, but somehow just works, and I can't explain it.

 

Finally, this movie has an Arrow Blu-ray release, and while I usually discuss how you can find the movie in the next paragraph, I wanted to bring it up here, because I think it's a big deal that a movie like this is getting that kind of treatment. If this can get a Blu-ray, it opens the door to so many others out there that are classics to a small group of us B-cinemaphiles, including tons of Ginty and Williamson flicks. It's an exciting world we live in where an 80s movie where Ginty wields a chainsaw and hooks up with his sister and tries to steal a diamond that burns people's hands isn't just on hard-to-find out-of-print VHS copies, but for $30 can be found on 1080p with all the fixin's.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you don't want to pony up for the Blu-ray--which I haven't done yet either--you can watch this for free as of this writing on Tubi, or on Prime if you're subscribed. This is beyond worth checking out, so make it happen however you can. And for more Ginty, you can go into our archives for the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode, ep 85 from May of 2021.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088359

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!