Night Force

Night Force

United States - 1987

Director - Lawrence D. Foldes

Lightning Video, 1987(?), VHS

This is nothing more than a young clueless republicans-of-the-80's battle cry. I use the term battle cry because these dudes are hard, rich-white kids with gym memberships - and they are going to get some.

Somewhere in Beverly Hills some rich white kids are hanging out: one of them is Carla (Linda Blair) and the other, her best friend Christie, the blonde daughter of a senator, and fiance of a super rich lawyer. Christie, the embodiment of pure white American goodness, will spend a great deal of the movie naked and whimpering, much of it at the mercy of brown skinned people.

Later at Christie's engagement party, she's out in the horse stables screwing her fiance's brother, and just in case you didn't get it the first time, after confessing to Carla in the gym showers, Christie flashbacks much of the previous sex scene while fondling herself in the shower. Exiting the gym moments later with perfect, massively ratted and rigid hair, Carla and Christie are fired upon from an unmarked black van, and Christie is kidnapped.

Unsatisfied with the liberal government's spineless impotency and unwillingness to intervene, Christies' ugly horsefaced friends (one of them played by Steve McQueen's son) gather up all the gung-ho they can find and arm themselves with some good clean indefatigable patriotic American spirit. Renting a U-haul trailer and packing along all their naivete, they zip off into South American jungle to confront the bearded, unabashedly Castro-esque warlord leader. Their first encounter with Mexicans in their native environment goes rather poorly, and they are rescued by Bishop (Richard Lynch), a hard drinking expatriate sporting a neckerchief (my brain tells me zebra print or something?).

Taking them back to his base, Bishop treats them to a hauntingly beautiful solo flute concerto, and later confesses to being a 'Nam Vet.



Having never returned to the States after his tour, Bishop now wears snazzy safari clothes and plays flute in his private Mexican enclave. This being a perfect opportunity to prove that 'Nam vets are just misunderstood, damaged-but-otherwise-good American patriots, Bishop volunteers to lead the totally clueless kids on their misadventure. Later he makes creepy sexual overtures toward Carla and tells her the secret of his flute playing: it's to "confuse people about his personality", and is at the same time, "a prayer".

During a gunfight a bad guy is captured, and the complicit kids stand around while Bishop tortures answers out of him. The next day, the Night Force raids the three-shack enemy base at midday, fight off a halftrack and majestically ride a white stallion through the battle.



Christie, and by proxy the purity of the American way of life, are saved from covetous third world savagery. Some of Force are sadly lost, but 'ol Bishop, that never-say-die-free-spirited rapscallion, always shows up to bail the Force out, and prove that if you can suspend your total bored disbelief, some people really do give a damn.