United States - 1987
Director - John G. Thomas
Vidmark Entertainment, 1987, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 26 minutes
The wonderful thing about the American Southwest is that it is largely empty of human made infrastructure save one thing; highways. Over vast distances of desolate and unforgiving terrain there is literally nothing but a strip of asphalt stretching to the horizon. This makes the Southwest, an area I personally know well, a great for location shooting both post-apocalyptic sci-fi and road racing movies on the cheap. Some of this has changed over the years of course, development has encroached on the desert and the various state’s chambers of commerce have learned to take advantage of these things. In the latter half of the 20th Century though, the southwest was still a veritable blank slate. Take for example 1987’s Banzai Runner, shot on location in California City, California. Boasting at present a population somewhere near 16 thousand, it was at the time of filming an as-yet undetonated boom-town with a mere four thousand souls living at the center a vast network of hot, empty pavement.
I’ve previously railed about comparing little unknown films to larger well-known titles. It’s generally unfair I think and neither requires nor expects much intellectual capacity from audience or writer. I am inclined however to point out the similarities, other than titular, between another recent LVA acquisition, Nomad Riders, and Banzai Runner. Though you mightn’t initially guess it, both films share an affinity for the open road, and in particular, the dusty barren open road of the southwest. They also share a thematic similarity that goes beyond the title screen to a plot about a guy driven to exact revenge on the nefarious highway-rogues who murdered his family.
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| Meh. |
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| I might be displeased, but I'll let it slide this time! |
All fluffy feel-good stuff to be sure, but not very convincing. In Nomad Riders, the protagonist was an vigilante too, and an unlikable one at that, but he knew what he was up against. He was not encumbered by any delusions of an external morality to whom all must answer. Steve Thrust, that unpleasant bastard, knew that he had to make justice, to take it himself if there was to be any at all. Plus, he did it to a better soundtrack.
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| This picture is about as clear as my feelings about Banzai Runner are going to get. |
Driving back to his dieing mothers house with this strange unexplained woman, they arrive just in time for a few final raspy words before she gives up the ghost. Taking a bath after the funeral, the woman reveals to Paul the nature of his fathers mysterious death in Turkey many years ago. Paul decides to go to Turkey and confront his fathers archrival-flautist, the Master Musician, a netherworldly Islamic djinn which breathes fire, and can shoot fire out of it’s eyes.
Returning later she retrieves a giant moth cocoon that she buries in the Master Musicians cave. When the moth emerges, she dies in agony in the arms of the savage who suddenly learns to scream.
I thought this was going to be a little bit like Exorcist 2 for a few minutes, while it has some similarities it got better, and it’s certainly one of the only movies I’ve seen to use Islamic theology in such a positive and interesting way. Unfortunately all the bizarrity is delivered with such deadpan sincerity and so little explanation that nothing seems out of the ordinary, even the actors seem to take it all in stride. It’s really only in retrospect that I’d realized what I had witnessed, and by that time it was too late, I didn’t want to watch any more flutes of either kind. 
Frightened by noises and something in the water, Mike and Kim return to the cabin where Dan and Jeri are talking, with less clothes on, a mixed blessing, but at least a change. At last, something starts to happen. Sudden beating on the walls of the cabin freaks everyone out, but Mike fires his tiny .22 pistol which temporarily stops the terror but also signals the end of any further possibility of skin.
Valiantly leaving the cabin to seek help, Mike enters a world of darkness and much of his actions are a mystery because I can’t see a goddamned thing. After Running into a Baptist church where the congregation is in full swing, the film shows promising signs of revival, but Mike passes quickly through a few moments of inspired editing before whacking his head on a rock, rendering him, and the remainder of this film once again unconscious. Waking, he gets a ride back to the cabin with a deputy sheriff, where, confirming our worst fears, the rednecks have already committed all the carnage and his friends, like the film are proven to be long dead.