Rolling Vengeance is probably a little hard to find. I saw it on a borrowed VHS tape, but a couple copies are available for purchase on DVD here at Amazon.
The Action/Adventure Section — A weekly column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
Rolling Vengeance
TAGLINE
- Always use the right tool for the job.
Ahh, the tricky temptations of 1980s VHS cover art. Those who grew up in my generation probably have a major affinity for the look and feel of exploitation box art from the 1980s and 1990s. You’ve also most likely been lured in more than once by the siren song of killer box art only to be majorly disappointed in the final product. Well, just like those bygone days, I got pulled in to watching Rolling Vengeance due to the massively appealing box art. Box art this brawny begs a question: If this movie can even live up to half of the cover’s potential, won’t that count for something?
Well, yes and no. Because, truth be told, Rolling Vengeance’s box art is highly accurate. That truck? Yeah, that is the truck featured in this movie… menacing drill and all. It is just straight up mean. And yeah, our hero does drive that truck over all sorts of cars and humans. So you are going to get what you paid for here. But you still probably paid too much.
Produced in Canada, this 1987 exploitation film follows the vigilante revenge mold like a glove, but adds monster truck mayhem into the mix. And Ned Beatty. So, Death Wish + Monster Trucks + Ned Beatty should = amazing. My math is right there, I checked. But instead, literally all this movie has going for it is a tough-looking truck and a really fun rockabilly redneck Ned Beatty performance. That plus some sweet box art. You aren’t getting much else.
Actually, if I’m being totally fair, the set up of the film is pretty endearing. Generic leading man Don Michael Paul plays Joey Rosso, the hot-blooded firstborn son of an established, blue collar trucker family. (I should note that Don Michael Paul went on to become a writer [Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man] and director [Half Past Dead] but he makes very little impression here.) Joey’s Dad seems like an awesome guy. He worked hard all his life so his kids could have a better life than he did, but when Joey decides not to go off to college, Big Joe (Lawrence Dane) buys a new 18-wheeler and welcomes his son into a partnership in their trucking business. Then a bunch of DWI rednecks kills their whole family on a country road. Naturally.
Big Joe and Joey don’t know what to do with their grief after the villains are released with little more than a slap on the wrist, so they head to apparently the only bar in town where they’ve always delivered beer. It’s owned by Tiny Doyle (Ned Beatty) and his gaggle of sons by different mothers who are the very same rednecks that killed Mrs. Rosso and the younger siblings. There’s some bar fighting shenanigans and then Tiny’s redneck boys just keep escalating things in a very disproportional manner.
And by disproportional I mean… you know how in most revenge movies something really bad happens at the beginning and pushes our hero over the edge? Well, in Rolling Vengeance you have the aforementioned drunken road murder, then Big Joe and his truck get smashed in with a cinder block, THEN Joey’s girlfriend gets raped just for good measure. These redneck dudes are such enormous bastards (literally) you really can’t wait to see wholesome Joey Rosso build a monster truck with the power of montage and go all “car-o-saurus” on these dudes. And he does.
One montage gets you a monster truck with armor plating, enormous wheels, a killer drill in the front, and even some flames out the top!
The only problem is that besides the awesomely-designed super truck, the movie feels limp throughout. Even the atrocities committed against the Rosso family seem rote and ineffectual. And when cars start getting smashed, there isn’t a lot of energy or excitement. Maybe it was the editing or direction by Steven H. Stern (who seems to have directed vast amounts of TV movies including The Park Is Mine (1986) starring Tommy Lee Jones as a Vietnam Vet who holds an urban park hostage and that 1997 Greg Louganis biopic starring Mario Lopez called Breaking The Surface) but I just couldn’t find the pulse to this movie. I think some synth pop or some quick editing or some interesting camera placement could have really injected a little life into Rolling Vengeance, but you won’t find much of that here. Or if you do it isn’t memorable.
Any signs of life go into critical condition once the Big Joe gets laid up, and Ned Beatty sort of keeps the breathing tube intact so there are at least some blips on the monitor. But with all the metal and mullets and monster trucks to be found in Rolling Vengeance, I can’t even say it stands out as a halfway decent revenge movie, much less a cult classic or required Canucksploitation viewing.
If you are a Ned Beatty completist (and there would be no shame there) or a monster truck enthusiast, then yeah… give Rolling Vengeance a spin. Otherwise, just watch The Road Warrior for the dozenth time to get your truck vengeance fix.
And I’m Out.