BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Comeuppance Reviews Jim Lowery (Smith) and Trent Matthews (O'Connor) are 'Nam buddies who, nine years after the war, are both haunted by the specter of their compatriot Jhonny O'Connor (that's how they spell his first name, it's not a typo) (Hood). Jim and Trent must feel guilty for Jhonny's becoming a POW. But when their dreams are so vivid, their injuries and cuts appear in their waking lives, they know there's a serious problem. The torment of rogue mercenary McGregor (Horton) and his torture tactics have gotten to Jim and Trent so badly, Trent's concerned wife Susanne (Foors) calls in psychologist Dr. Mike Campbell (Haggerty) for help. But the boys must "sleep together" in their fatigues to defeat the enemies in their dreams. When dreams and real life blur, who knows what the truth really is?Night Wars is a good attempt at seriousness from AIP, but, once again, comes off as silly most of the time. That might be because of the constant, uncanny casting of goofy-looking sweaty people in almost every role. But there are some cool ideas and effects mixed in with the standard machine-gun firefights. This movie asks the question: what if the emotional trauma of returning Vietnam vets mutated into an actual, physical horror after the war? Try to imagine Jungle Assault (1989) crossed with A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). What if Freddy Krueger was a Vietnam vet?The role of Jim Lowery should have been played by Wings Hauser, and he and Trent surely are the Bill and Ted of AIP movies, but mention (not necessarily honorable) must go to Dan Haggerty as the "cool" psychologist with the necklace and the pared-down beard. He's really showing his range here. He's not Grizzly Adams or the guy from Elves (1989). He's a doctor. It's really one of his best sweaters, er, performances.There are the prerequisite torture sequences, but this time, they are really heaped on. There's also the typical jungle/war clichés, but this time they are mixed with a dash of spookiness. Also it must be noted that this film has the most amount of people bellowing "NOOOOooooo!!!!!" that we've seen to date - it occurs four times during the movie.While the ideas in Night Wars can't exactly be described as original (many are lifted wholesale from Elm Street), the attempt to marry the Vietnam war film with the phantasmagoric dream film gives this AIP outing an interesting and noteworthy edge above some of the others. It really gives new meaning to the term "Dream Warriors". Dokken take note.For a war/horror hybrid film served up AIP style, look no further than Night Wars.for more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

capkronos Trent (Brian O'Connor) and Jimmy (Cameron Smith) are two Nam vet buddies who escaped a POW prison camp only to face worse horrors at home when the past literally comes back to haunt them. They're harassed by a soldier they left behind and a sadistic traitor who helped torture them, and when they're attacked in their dreams, they emerge with real scars (a la A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET). The two deck out in cameo and carry high-powered machine guns into their dreams to fight back after one's wife is raped and killed by a ghost. Dan (GRIZZLY ADAMS) Haggerty is the top-billed guest star. He plays a psychiatrist who tries to "help" by holding them at gunpoint, drugging them and tying them up in his office!The premise is somewhat new, but the unconvincing Nam flashbacks look like the stars are playing War Games in the woods behind their house, the dialogue ("Let's do it!," "I'm scared, man!") is annoying and the action and horror scenes just aren't very exciting.Prolific director David A. Prior also combined the war and horror genres in THE LOST PLATOON (1989) and also directed KILLER WORKOUT (1987), MARDI GRAS FOR THE DEVIL (1992) and MUTANT SPECIES (1995) in between all his cheapo action movies. He scripted from a story he wrote with his brother Ted Prior and William Zipp (both of whom acted in his previous films).

dinky-4 Viewers will find it easy to criticize this low-budget, no-name effort found only on the dusty backshelves of a few video stores. It suffers from the flat dialog, so-so acting, haphazard scripting, and awkward pacing so often found in these Grade-Z productions.And yet there's something about the merger of nightmare and reality in "Night Wars" which gives it an odd, almost haunting quality which softens the edges of all its many faults. Or, putting it another way, considering the vast resources spent on "Pearl Harbor" versus the scant resources spent on this movie, which one is really the more satisfying achievement? Aside from that blurring between waking and dreaming, the most distinctive feature here comes in the form of two torture scenes occurring in Vietnamese POW camps. In the first scene, Cameron Smith has a red-hot metal rod pressed against his bare chest while he's tied between two posts, and in the second, Brian O'Connor -- tied between two trees -- has strips of barb-wire tightened around his naked torso. Unlike many Hollywood movies in which the hero suffers stoically, these two men scream with open-mouthed agony. (You can even count the fillings in Cameron Smith's teeth.) And unlike many Hollywood heroes, these two men don't have perfectly-chiseled physiques. (O'Connor especially shows signs of middle-aged flab.) The result is unnerving because the torture seems to be inflicted on real men rather than movie actors. Top-billed Dan Haggerty has little to do in his part and Steve Horton overdoes the wild-eyed look as the sadistic villain, but Jill Foor invokes suitable sympathy as Brian O'Connor's bewildered wife. As for the two tormented ex-POWs, O'Connor is earnest and almost even appealing and Cameron Smith has the born-to-be-tortured look which is just right for this part.

timothycurry Oh, dear, this one is awful! I once bet a Navy Chief Petty Officer, a Marine Gunnery Sergeant, and a couple of enlisted guys a case of beer if they could get through it without "losing it," and I let them decide for themselves what "losing it" meant. I won the beer.One learns a number of interesting things about infantry combat in this little retcher - for one thing, the Viet Cong ought to sue the makers for defamation (it was shot in Mexico, and most of the bad guys are remarkably un-Asian types who the credits reveal have names ending in "ez.") Let's start with the a new martial arts technique - get your opponent face-down and pull his hair back and voila! his neck breaks. Evidently that's what my little sister was after lo those many years ago...The idea, of course, is a post-traumatic-syndrome exploitation flick. One views a patrol of good guys, evidently Woodstock castoffs, stumbling through the Vietnamese jungles falling over one another - "combat separation" here evidently refers to "get 12 guys into the camera's viewfinder simultaneously." One shot down the trail would have shish-kebab'd these goofs out of their misery. And what misery it was...Here we have the hero, in the middle of a desperate firefight, ducking behind a tree and for some reason popping the magazine out from his .45 - perhaps to see how many "bullets" were left - I use the term "bullets" advisedly since the camera closeup reveals, in all its brassy glory, the crimped end of a blank cartridge. Appalling.The climax involves our heroes stuffing a cheap hotel room with enough ordnance to sink an aircraft carrier, then, as do all who are minutes away from furious mortal combat, falling asleep. I shall leave the denouement for those stubborn enough to last that far...Three thumbs-down, but a decent effort for the truly masochistic.