Nightforce (1987 Video) User Reviews

Richard Lynch + Linda Blair = happiness

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 13 June 2019]

This movie is why I work so hard on this site. The thrill of being awake at 3:26 AM on a school night, knowing I have to work all day tomorrow, but being rewarded with a movie that not only has Linda Blair armed with a crossbow, but also features Richard Lynch, an actor whose work continually elevates every film that he appeared in.

Lynch plays Bishop, a Vietnam vet turned mercenary who has come on board to train a team of college students - led by Blair as a senator's daughter and Janes Van Patten - as the only people brave enough to rescue their friend from Central American terrorists led by Estoban.

Honestly, this movie would be pointless were it not for Lynch and Blair. He contributes a haunted performance as a man who has seen and done too much, now content to hide in Latin America, playing his flute and taking care of a monkey. No, I didn't make that up. And Blair rises above the material, as always, showing plenty of feistiness and the ability to make headbands look good.

Nightforce isn't going to change your world. But when you can't sleep, it's going to be a warm blanket that will reward you with a comfortable journey back to a time and place when Communists could only be defeated by college students.

Oh yeah - Cameron Mitchell plays the senator, so this movie really does check the boxes of actors whose movies I'll watch no matter what.

There can never be enough Linda Blair!

[Coventry · 4/10 · 13 March 2022]

Linda Blair must be the only actress in the world whom I love more with every new and utterly lousy movie of hers that I watch! Never mind the immortal horror classic ("The Exorcist") or the socially relevant TV-drama's ("Born Innocent", "Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic") she starred in during the 70s; the sleazy and trashy B-movies she made throughout the 80s are what define her as the ultimate cult cinema siren! Now, admittedly, for "Night Force" you need to have a lot of Linda Blair fondness, because the film itself is terrible.

The one thing that is really great about "Night Force" is, ... the plot description! It sounds like a cool rip-off/variation of "Red Dawn", with a bunch of friends spontaneously deciding to go and rescue their friend who got kidnapped by a Mexican crime cartel and taken to a primitive jungle prison. The girl's fiancée is too cowardly to do something, and her father - a senator - cannot act because he swears by not negotiating with terrorists.

The rest of the film is a sore letdown, to be honest. The 'mission' is quite dull, the action sequences are poorly staged, Linda Blair disappears without a trace half of the time, the locations and scenery are uninspired, and the climax is unremarkable. Highlights, next to Blair, are the flamboyant performance of Richard Lynch, and the gratuitous nudity provided by Claudia Udy.

Dumb.

[gridoon · 4/10 · 2 January 2002]

Making a film that's even stupider than Schwarzenegger's "Commando" seems like an unimaginable feat, but here it is. Starts off with some gratuitous nudity, then degenerates into a ludicrous action film. Some of the dumbness was probably intentional, but that doesn't make it excusable. Linda Blair is curiously absent during most of the big action scenes, Cameron Mitchell, in his last film appearance, has a brief cameo, and the main villain is a Fidel Castro lookalike! The film is thankfully short, though (not counting the closing song, it runs about 73 minutes). (*1/2)

Bereft of thrills

[moonspinner55 · 1/10 · 2 September 2002]

Extremely slight actioner featuring clean-cut, country club kids turning into suburban Rambos when one of their friends (a busty blonde, no less!) is kidnapped by nefarious Third World villains; naturally, these brutal nasties keep their caged hostage half-nude, but it isn't sexy because she's crying all the time. Boring low-budget trash served as veteran actor Cameron Mitchell's sad cinematic swan song. Pity Linda Blair, apparently placed amongst the cast only to get her name on the video-box (she has absolutely nothing to do). Why not make Linda the star of the show and do a distaff variation on "First Blood"? Apparently, nobody involved with this rinky-dink thing was really thinking--not director Lawrence D. Foldes nor his three-count 'em-three screenwriters, Russel W. Colgin, Michael Engel, and Don O'Melveny. Shame on these guys! NO STARS from ****

Yikes!

[AshXF · 5 November 2004]

I once took a job at a crappy, buffet-style restaurant to pay bills and I quit in less than a month. I hope that's the only reason Linda Blair decided to do this movie. I'm on a quest to see everything she's been in, and I love Linda Blair but jeeeeeez. BAD movie!

In a nutshell, a wimpy damsel in distress, daughter of a senator, is kidnapped by clichéd Latino terrorists and hauled off to some banana republic as a hostage. Now her father, a senator who pushes for no negotiations with terrorists, decides he'd rather loose his kid than his job and we are made to believe that the United States government is absolutely NOT going to recuse a senator's daughter. (Come on, that little country would have been turned into a parking lot)

Enter her 5 college friends. They are old enough to be legal to purchase guns, but still young enough to be stupid. Somehow, in a matter of hours, they procure machine guns and a bazooka and set off to shooting in the local dump without alerting the authorities. They then pile all the weaponry into the back of their jeep, cover it with a tarp, miraculously avoid the border patrol and just mosey down into South America looking for their friend.

Naturally they get into trouble. Enter Bishop, the Vietnam vet mercenary who, out of the goodness of his heart, equips the kids with better, bigger guns he happens to have lying buried in his backyard, training and cameo gear. How nice. And thank god he knew how to fly a chopper else they may have had to walk home at the end.

So now, the newly expert commandos, having bypassed the years of training necessary to fight the terrorists, rush in to rescue their friend and end up blowing up everything in sight. It's a good thing these terrorists who probably were given guns for Christmas toys as kids have no aim. In the process, 2 of the guys are killed, but hey, as long as they rescued the idiotic girl, then it's OK. Trade one certain death for 2 accidentals, it's all good. And despite the fact that all the bad guys are dead, they don't go back to retrieve their friends' bodies. I'm sure their families will understand. And how many times did this blond chick have to show her breasts or be raped? I think she wears clothes for all of 3 minutes of her screen time.

Now I WILL say this, Linda Blair did pretty damn good with what she was given. She was no wimpy, clichéd girl usually seen in these testosterone laced flicks. She had the best lines, watching the boys shoot off bazookas in the dump, tricking them into taking her along, and it was kinda cool to see her run, all decked out in cameo, shooting up some bad guy butt. However, for all her character's enthusiasm in rescuing her friend, she only got to shoot in the last sequence. The majority of the movie had her ducking behind cars as the boys shot the bad guys.

So why did I shell out $5 to a used video website and another $5 for shipping? As I said, I'm on a quest to see every movie Linda Blair's ever been in, even this one.

There *IS* one good thing that might make this video worth it to Linda Blair fans....the opening and ending credits has a rather catchy rock and roll song playing, and it is sung by none other than Linda Blair! She sounds a bit like Pat Benatar, not too bad either! She should have looked into a singing career instead of making this movie.

Hats off to Linda, major BOOOS to whoever wrote this swiss cheese of a plot story.

80s garbage.

[dae5 · 1/10 · 3 December 2003]

A definitive example of 80s action trash: probably the only people who would shell out cash for a ticket were wasted teens looking for some skin and lots of explosions. Watch the opening sequence and marvel out how shoddy the editing is: when one of the baddies fires at an officer, there is actually what looks like a break in the film (as if to chop a few frames out) followed by a painfully out-of-sync death scene of the fat officer- ooph!- getting plugged by a bullet, which apparently stopped in mid-air for five seconds while the camera crew switched reels.

By today's standards (and 80s standards, probably) the action is sub-par, not gory enough to be interesting but violent enough to be morally inexcusable. Thankfully, every once in awhile Night Force falls into softcore porn territory- this is the only movie I've seen that interrupts a cheap shower scene with flashbacks to a cheap sex scene- but not nearly enough to make the rest of the movie bearable. Night Force exploits pointless violence and gratuitous sex, and poorly. Virtually everyone involved in making this film- actors, actresses, FX technicians, editors- have officially lost any artistic integrity they once had.

Should have been shot at night- without lights

[paskuniag · 1/10 · 2 October 2009]

If Leonard Pinth-Garnell, the Bad Cinema maven from SNL, ever compiled a list of ten examples of "Truly Bad Cinema," this epic would have to be on it. Now, I usually don't consider films like this one to be worthy of mention on a bad-movie list. Normally, I prefer the grand turkeys like "Conqueror" and "Exorcist II." Still, Linda Blair is Linda Blair, and it was her starring in it that got it made. So I guess we can blame her for this turkey. The fact that these college-age dudes and babes can suddenly shoot like Green Berets is a variation of Roger Ebert's "thirty-second genius" motif. That is where the lead hears the whole plot from somebody in 30 seconds, and immediately knows what to do. In this case, the kids practice shooting for a couple hours, then are ready to do battle with an entire army. My favorite bad moment is when the kidnapped girl is ravaged by one of the enemy soldiers. The Commandante comes along, shoots the soldier, then has HIS way with her. She must have had more Latinos land on her than the Bay of Pigs. My favorite character is the American soldier-of-fortune, played by Richard Lynch. They should have called him Pizza-Face Jones, since a) Lynch's face has more holes in it than the Van Wyck Expressway, not far from where Lynch grew up in Brooklyn and, b) he acts like Harrison Ford on 'Ludes. There's not much more to say, but if you must see it, try to catch it, unedited, on one of the premium movie channels. If you rent it, do so on two-for-one night, along with something that you know is good. A couple beers will help you bear it.

don't bother

[chileansarah · 1/10 · 15 January 2006]

I don't really remember why I rented this movie, but it was a HUGE mistake. I WANT MY 73 MINUTES BACK!!!!! Basically this movie is an 80's teen flick totally stereo typing Latinos and adding to the already bad Cuban image. Not only could a child still in the womb predict the outcome of this movie after only watching 10 minutes but the last half of the movie was just one big gun scene. WHERE DID THEY GET THE BAZOKA!?!?!?!?! I mean, I have one just LYING in the backyard too but.... Really, if you want to waste an evening or you really like one of this actors, please, rent it. If you want a good movie or a bad movie that is okay to laugh at, look elsewhere.

Despite its mediocrity, items like Night Force actually did their own little part to make the video stores of the 80's great.

[tarbosh22000 · 6/10 · 16 September 2014]

Christy Hansen (Udy) is a beautiful equestrian rider who seemingly has the perfect life: she's about to marry Bob Worthington (King), a member of the prestigious and wealthy Worthington family. (Don't they even sound rich?) - the only problem is, she's in love with Bob's rough-and-tumble brother Steve (Van Patten). She thinks this is the worst problem in her life, until she's kidnapped and held captive by the San Felipe Anarchist Army. They're a south of the border terrorist organization led by the sinister Estoban (Fisher) who doesn't at all resemble any Cuban dictators we might know, and his army of thugs. Getting the typical run-around and red tape from the government - which includes Christy's own father, Senator Adam Hansen (Mitchell) - Christy's friends decide to become a makeshift mercenary force and go and rescue her themselves. Despite having no experience in the violent arts, the aforementioned Steve, plus Henry (McQueen), Eddie (Miller), Mack (Marcel) and Carla (Blair) attempt the rescue mission nevertheless. Along their treacherous way, they meet the mysterious but extremely helpful Vietnam vet Bishop (Lynch). Will this ragtag band of amateur vigilantes rescue their friend? Dare you find out? A very impressive B-movie cast filled with fan favorites just kind of wade around in the mush of this colorless outing. It starts off in a very disjointed manner, and steadily becomes a more coherent, but more standard exploding hut/fruit cart chase actioner that doesn't really offer anything new for die-hard action fans. Sure, the opening bit has plenty of slow-motion mindless shooting set to the synthesized main theme and you think "this has promise". but then a certain blandness and repetition sets in. 80's staples such as the disco scene and aerobics help matters, but not enough to save the movie in its entirety. The movie needed more Cam Mitchell, who basically does a "sit-down" role. Chad McQueen brandishes a rocket launcher, and, after some initial fears, he does indeed maintain his trademark: no sleeves. McQueen's arms must always be unencumbered by any form of cloth.

Richard Lynch puts in a likable performance, and he even plays the flute and has a pet monkey. Where else but here will you see the movie credit "Rambo the monkey as Pin"? Pin, or should we say Rambo, wears cameo pants like the rest of the cast. His performance really stands out. Van Patten also appeared in director Foldes' Young Warriors (1983), and seems like a young, confused Treat Williams. Linda Blair plays the "tough chick", playing against the more girly Christy. It could almost be said that her character here could be a continuation of Brenda from Savage Streets (1984). Carla could be like what Brenda would have turned out as later in life. Adding to the positives column is the end-credits song, "I Still Remember", sung by Linda herself.

Despite its mediocrity, items like Night Force actually did their own little part to make the video stores of the 80's great. They added their own brick in the wall of mind-boggling choices the best video stores had. Not every movie ever made is going to be an awesome life-changer. Sometimes corraling some familiar names together and having them engage in some mindless shooting and blow-ups is enough. Clearly the filmmakers knew this, as indicated by its 79 minute running time. It was all good enough for Lightning Video to release it (it was produced by Vestron Pictures) - and as long as you don't expect too much, you might be able to wring some enjoyment out of the rag that is Night Force.

Low octane rescue flick

[lor_ · 21 April 2023]

My review was written in May 1987 after watching the film on Lightning video cassette.

"Nightforce" a/k/a "Night fighters" during lensing, is a desultory action picture covering the corny territory of youngsters going south of the border on a mission to save their friend. Plot line was handled better in previous films "Toy Soldiers" and "Let's Get Harry".

Linda Blair is cast once again as a tough young babe, who insists on going on a commando raid with her male buddies when her best pal Christy (Claudia Udy) is kidnapped by terrorists. Her father, a U. S. senator (Cameron Mitchell), has opposed any negotiation with terrorists in his legislation and similarly the government's "hands are tied". Led by Christy's boyfriend Steve (James Van Patten), the youngsters head for Central America.

They're getting nowhere fast when a good samaritan Vietnam vet Richard Lynch protects them against Mexican baddies and volunteers to help out. Pic sags miserably during an uneventful middle section, followed by a corny climax (Christy has become militant and picks up a gun to shoot one of her tormentors).

Okay stunt work and Udy's randomly inserted nude scenes are the main diversions here, while Blair capably sings a theme song over the opening and closing credits.