Theme Song: Large swaths of this soundtrack borrow heavily from Jerry Goldsmith’s “The Tunnel,” from First Blood’s soundtrack.
Compare that with this random part of the Killzone soundtrack.
Interesting Dated References: ‘Nam vets being of any concern to society.
Social Context: For the sexless basement-dwelling nerds in the VHS direct-to-video scene, Killzone marks a special moment in time. It was shortly after this movie that director David A. Prior teamed-up with director/actor/producer David Winters and formed AIP (Action International Pictures), considered one of the best and schlockiest direct-to-video movie makers of the ‘80s/’90s. When you look at a list of AIP releases, it really is insane how many films they put out in such a short amount of time, and how many of those are bad-but-good and totally over the top. My best guess is the David-duo were coked out of their minds.
Summary: But just because Killzone has an important pedigree does not mean the film is excused from the fact it’s a poorly shot First Blood knock-off with little rewatch value. In fact, the Davids must have known it missed the mark because this film basically has the same plot as the far superior Deadly Prey made a few years later under the AIP banner.
So some guys are hanging out in a forest in Akron doing some type of military LARPing thing. One of the LARPers, McKenna, goes totally insane because of The ‘Nam and starts killing all the other LARPers.
The leader of the exercise decides he has to kill McKenna and cover it all up, but clarifies it must happen within the “killzone.” From this point on, things take a very formulaic tone as McKenna sets booby traps, evades capture, and eventually overpowers exercise-leader Colonel Crawford.
Throughout, we’re somewhere between The Most Dangerous Game and First Blood, and though it’s interesting to see what’s done within the budget constraints (all kills are reduced to off-screen, “squelch,” sound effects), the end result is kind of blah.
Worth Mentioning:
– Many of the main players in this cast became AIP regulars: Fritz Matthews, Ted Prior, David Campbell, William Zipp. You will only care about this if you are a fucking nerd.
– There’s an actual listing in the credits for “Knife Design,” and said knife seemed to be featured prominently, so I wonder if they were hoping the knife would become insanely popular like the genericized “Rambo knife” all the white trash kids would try to threaten me with when I was delivering newspapers at age 10.
Poster and Box Art: It’s hard to fuck with the cover art from this home video release
It’s literal over-the-top insanity, which although not realized in the film, would soon be fulfilled by subsequent AIP productions.