The plight of the damaged Vietnam veteran is a favorite story visited time and time again in every possible way. From the sympathetic anti-war portrayal of Tom Cruise in BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY to Stallone's spectacular pro-violence testament of FIRST BLOOD, there is a lot of movie value in taking a broken man hardened by war and testing him a final time, perhaps unfairly, with the quiet conventionality of civilian life. There are all kinds of ways to tell this tale yet, the central conceit is clear. Can the damaged but decorated hero of a country's war become his own savior when he gets home to his native land and the trouble just begins?

Joe Salkow is a man who takes just such a rhetorical test and fails miserably. After watching two Vietnamese men rape a woman during the war and then blow her up with a grenade, something changes deep inside him. And even though Joe barely says a word throughout the course of the film, the narrator is always too eager to tell us what he is thinking, feeling; "Joe was obsessed with one idea: To destroy people, particularly lovers. The scene of the Vietnamese girl and her two captors had triggered something in Joe's mind which could only be satisfied if he destroyed others." From there he's off to the local construction supply house where Joe buys a crate full of dynamite for eighty dollars and a signature (like many things, it seems carrying out maniacal revenge fantasies were apparently so much simpler before 9/11).

From there, he is on the prowl, taking time to stalk a couple, watch them make out and then when he can stand no more he crawls toward their position commando-style and leaves a stick of dynamite, all so he can scuttle back to his hidey hole and wait until the most inopportune moment to detonate it. At first he is only content to blow up a young couple necking in a car. But eventually he hardens to this harsh action and refines his craft, such as when he accosts his next victims and carefully takes care to explode the male into smithereens with dynamite first so can he rape the girl once she is alone (only to blow her up later anyway). If you are expecting motivations, explanations or justifications for such antics, forget it, even the narrator seems to have gone insane as well and now sees Joe as some kind of sympathetic figure as he informs us matter of factly, that "Joe Salkow's ultimate dream was to find a pretty girl to rape and to put his dynamite to use." Gee, thanks for clearing that up, I thought he just was a guy who "loved too much".

Next he watches two lesbians make out on a boat in what would have been a touching display in any other film in the world, only to blow one of them up and stake the other one to the ground, naked with limbs askew. But this time, he doesn't rape her, he covers her with kerosene and burns her alive. In case you are wondering why Joe didn't touch her (perhaps he suffered from premature immolation?) the narrator is there once again to tell us what Joe is thinking and pour more salt into cinematic wound that is this film. "Even though Joe is loaded with hang-ups, one thing that bugs him are girls that make love to each other." What? Joe doesn't like vanilla cinematic lesbian sex? Now that's a sicko. He simply must be stopped...

This was a pointless and brutal little foray into the mind of a sexual terrorist unlike anything I have ever seen. Picture the silly dynamite explosion trickery from a Wile E Coyote cartoon and mix it with the violent, X-rated film FORCED ENTRY and you will have an idea of how this plays onscreen, only somehow more bizarre. Filled with breasts, I can imagine some people might be aroused by this, and I worry about them. Call me a purist, but when it comes to sex scenes I like seeing a naked woman's body parts exposed seductively, deliberately with artful camerawork, not blasted off her skeleton with a sudden twist of a plunger.

Sinferno Says...
Yucko/Neato Factor: Not a blast for everyone, but it does pack a punch. The original Porno for Pyros.
Production Values: Explosions were largely smoke bombs with the film sped up. Film stock is poor in many places. This film actually benefits from its bad effects, however. A modern, realistic depiction of these crimes would have been illegal to film let alone buy in this country.
Realism: The police "can't find a pattern" in the crimes of the Ravager even though they all involve explosives; dynamite in fact, bought from the same store. The police should have at least questioned the narrator, he seems to knows way too much about the motivations of The Ravager for an innocent.
Value for Price: For $10.00 there is nothing else like this. Whether this is a good or bad thing probably depends on you. Good films move their audiences, this one gives them aftershocks.
Plot: Someone got forced sex in my senseless violence... Someone got senseless violence in my forced sex.... Two strange tastes that taste strange together.