The story
begins when an important amount of guns is stolen from a local armory, and
street thugs are going wacko shooting everyone in sight, of course there's one
man tough enough to stop all this madness: Lt. James Long (Played by Leo Fong) But he's been feeling depressed lately as his
wife had been raped and killed earlier that year. So he teams up with ATF agent
Bryant (Roundtreem, Shaft himself)
and the entire Riverside, CA police department to track down the asses
responsible. Luckily for Long's revenge scheme, the same evildoers are behind
the attack on his wife as well as the stolen guns: crimelord and all-around
kingpin bad guy Joe Marks and his murderous assistant Nighthawk.
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| Another poster. |
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| Promotional AD. |
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| I'm tough and I wear La Coste. |
While the
film is certainly imperfect, it has its entertaining qualities and would have
been ideal for undiscerning drive-in audiences of the day. For example, the
editing is choppy: one minute we're seeing Cam Mitchell having a grand old time
as Marks, the next we get a several-minute training sequence with Fong in a gym
with absolutely no setup or dialogue, then we're back at the police station
with Roundtree, etc. Add to that the use of mumbling non-actors in a semi-documentary
style, and the hilariously wooden acting of Michael Farrell as Long's Captain,
Skidmore, and you get a few yuks, but nothing substantial.
Fong as Long
is as perfectly wooden as he usually is, and his hair is charmingly Ramones-ish
this time around. But the star of the show once again is the immortal Cam
Mitchell. He looks like he's having a ball as the nefarious Marks, and hams it
to the max, but in the best way imaginable. Marks/Mitchell is the type of
villain whose main activities include wearing sunglasses and an ascot to bed,
and teaching his dog (Sparky) to smoke, as well as boring stuff like killing
prostitutes and enabling the L.A. area to go into martial law. God bless
Cameron Mitchell. We'll never see another like him.Stack Pierce, besides having
an awesome name, is suitably menacing as Marks' consigliere, and looks like
what would happen if Bill Cosby turned evil. The great Richard Roundtree is
under-utilized and should have done much more. After teaming up with Leo Fong,
he'll probably go back to teaming up with Harrison Muller, Jr. Either that or
Ernest Borgnine.So yes, it does have some of the trappings of low-budget
filmmaking such as poor audio and a weird pace, but it was director Frank
Harris' first directorial film.
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| Shaft is here to level up the cast! |
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| You mean your dick is this size? |
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| Cop lessons. |
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| what yo lukin' at! |
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| Fire! |
Unfortunately, his mediocrity seems ingrained,
as his next two features, Low Blow (1986) and The Patriot (1986) seem to prove.
In the action department, it's pretty much shootings and training sequences and
not much else, although Fong does give one unlucky suspect an interrogation
he'll never forget. Starring Sparky the dog as himself (as his credit goes) in
a movie-stealing performance, though he can't quite top Mitchell, they work
well together. Killpoint was released by Crown International, and then put out
on VHS in the U.S. by Vestron. Featuring the catchy closing song "Livin'
on the Inside" by Ramona Gibbons, Killpoint isn't really a great movie,
but its personalities like the repeat-offender crew of Fong, Pierce and
Mitchell make it reasonably worthwhile.
Here are the opening titles:
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