Review: Day of the Assassins

Greek tycoon Glenn Ford (!) hires freelance operative Chuck Connors to retrieve a mysterious document that was on a sunken yacht somewhere in Mexico. The yacht also supposedly contained valuable treasure. Assorted fortune hunters turn up at the same Mexican resort as Connors, including mute Richard Roundtree and frequently shirtless Jorge Rivero. Susana Dosamantes plays the token female (after Jill St. John supposedly walked off set), whilst Henry Silva briefly appears as a Mexican police chief.

 

AKA “Day of the Assassin”, though the on-screen title uses the plural. Showing every bit the troubled production, let alone every bit the film co-directed by the man behind “Turkey Shoot”, is this largely dreadful cheapie from 1979. Co-directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (the aforementioned “Turkey Shoot” as well as the quite good “The Man From Hong Kong”) and the film’s producer Carlos Vasallo, this is the infamous Spanish-Mexican-American co-production where several of the cast and crew got so pissed off about their pay advances not arriving in their accounts that they walked off the project entirely. Apparently one of those people was the film’s original director, with Trenchard-Smith a last minute replacement brought in to try to save the thing (The man hadn’t made “Turkey Shoot” at this point, so perhaps producers weren’t aware of his fairly modest talent, to be charitable). By reading his own account of the matter, it sounds as if Trenchard-Smith directed much of the film, so it would appear it was a lost cause anyway, because he does a terrible job. I’ve heard it said that Trenchard-Smith’s specialty is filming big action on a small-scale budget. In reality, aside from “The Man From Hong Kong”, he makes cheap shit (and that film was pretty cheap too). Just look at his two martial arts cheapies for instance (“Day of the Panther”, “Strike of the Panther”), they’re two of the worst films ever made from a guy who also made “Turkey Shoot”. “The Man From Hong Kong” and “Leprechaun 3” should not be the best films on anyone’s resumé, no matter how watchable they are.

 

The film is so badly cobbled together that it looks like two separate sets of footage filmed at different times and sloppily put together. Meanwhile, I’d be shocked if the underused Richard Roundtree and Henry Silva weren’t among the people who talked off set. Roundtree doesn’t get a word of dialogue throughout, and Silva has about two (brief) scenes of little interest or importance. Neither look terribly pleased to be there, nor does a ludicrously cast and completely crushingly bored Glenn Ford as a supposed Greek tycoon (!) who never once takes his aviators off. It’s quite sad to see a genuinely good actor like Ford in something like this, presumably only for the money. He looks like he’s been filmed at his summer house, as well. Poolside no less. Ford and Silva give the same amount of investment as the poor hostages in those terrorist videos you’d see on the news. Roundtree’s cigar-smoking and cynically intermittent appearances suggest the role was likely something previously rejected by Fred Williamson (who was fond of working on overseas projects for a day just so he could sample the local cuisine or go sight-seeing or whatever). I also think several of his moments are actually re-used multiple times, which seems like a trick from the Ed Wood-ian school of shit, cynical filmmaking when an actor wasn’t around to complete all of their scenes.

 

Seemingly in a much better mood is our leading man Chuck Connors, and a very capable B-star he is. When you don’t have the budget for a Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, or James Coburn, Chuck Connors is your man. If there’s a reason to see the film – and there isn’t – it’s Chuck, who does solid, amusing work in a film with precious little else to keep you awake. It’s a shame because on paper the plot does seem like something that could have been interesting. Unfortunately, it’s been so poorly edited and lethargically directed that you never get into it. Even the action – supposedly Trenchard-Smith’s forte, isn’t anything memorable. The climactic car chase is a total bore, for instance and the subsequent gunfire and explosions not terribly much more riveting. It’s hard to care about any of that when you don’t care about any of the sketchily drawn characters or their problems.

 

Typically shoddy McProduct from the director of “Turkey Shoot”, badly cobbled together and mostly acted with little investment. Connors is fine, but he can’t turn this shit into gold on his own. Really poor stuff, even if it’s not the director’s worst film. Let that one sink in. The muddled screenplay is by Robert Avard Miller (whose background is in dialogue translation and dialogue direction) from a novel by Robin Estridge (“Eye of the Devil”).

 

Rating: D+