Bad Movie Review: Operation Hit Squad (1987)
Starring:
Vera Johns (credited ‘Vera Johns Sutherland’)
Charles Segal
Gael Taylor
Brian O’Shaughnessy
Ken Gampu
Dir: Tony van der Merwe & Kathy Viedge
Inspired by this week’s post about Nollywood classic “Baby Police” , I thought I’d share my thoughts on one of my favourite pieces of African cinema. Ladies and gentlemen, this is “Operation Hit Squad”.
I’m not entirely sure why this movie was made. It’s low budget, and nobody involved had worked in cinema before or since. That said, a lot of movies get bankrolled by millionaires looking for tax breaks due to their philanthropy.
The first thing you notice about the movie is during the opening credits. Superimposed over the screen, it simply reads…
SUCCESSFUL FILM PRODUCTION CO. PRESENTS…
I wonder if success is defined in South African cinema by the movie being released in the UK a staggering seventeen years after its production. Even then it’s straight to the bargain bin. At £1, many viewers would feel ripped off, not BadMovieBlog.com!
The whole movie is badly overdubbed. Maybe there were problems with background noise in the master shots, but whatever happened, all dialogue was re-recorded in the studio. Many of the South African actors even got replaced with American accents – after all, nobody’s going to buy the rights to distribute a film internationally if everyone in it has funny accents.
Worse than that, a lot of the dialogue has clearly been changed in post-production. The best example of this is when a dying man, clearly speaking to another character, simply groans out of sync with his own mouth. I’ve never witnessed anybody dying, but I’m not sure that you fail to lipsynch with yourself in your final throes.
The whole plot is driven by a plane full of wealthy, South African mens’ wives that gets shot down by terrorists, and subsequently get rescued by B-Movies’ answer to the A-Team.
A plane flies over a terrorist camp. It’s never revealed what these terrorists are called or what their fight is, but they must be bad because, after all, they’re terrorists. Upon spotting the plane, the baddies ponder shooting it down or letting it go. Deciding that the secret of their location cannot be compromised, they decide to shoot it down, and reveal their location.
The cast in ‘Operation Hit Squad’ are unbelievably amateur. That’s incredible though, because I’m sure I spotted George Michael, Rodney off of ‘Only Fools and Horses‘ and Lynn from ‘Alan Partridge‘.
Two of the women end up captive back at the terrorists’ camp where they are subjected to repeated rape. It drives poor Lynn mad. So mad in fact, that she decides to scrawl messages of hope and liberation across her cell wall in her own excrement.
The women are inevitably rescued by the Hit Squad in an action sequence that lasts an unbelievable fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of slow motion explosions. Fifteen minutes of repeated slow motion explosions. I counted the stunts in this sequence, and there are about 4. Most of which were recorded on two cameras from different angles at the same time – clearly their stunt men were paid by the hour! These separate angles are then passed off as completely different stunts. Maybe it was my keen eye, or maybe it was completely obvious.
One of my favourite things about the whole movie is Ken Gampu’s knife – one end has a blade, the other has a compass. Gampu plays a master tracker and bushman whose skills become particularly handy when they need to follow the trail from the crash site to the terrorist camp. Aswell as following broken twigs and footprints, Gampu also uses his compass. Something that could only come in handy if the terrorists left notes with words to the effect of “WE WENT NORTH”.
Despite this movie’s ridiculous logistical and amateurish clumsiness, it’s quite cutting edge. Filmed in 1987 South Africa, it is full of black actors, side by side with white actors. A truly wonderful political statement. That doesn’t stop them from doing their own ‘Hot Shots‘ joke with camo paint and a black man who hilariously doesn’t need it. He could have done with some actual camo gear though, instead of the stupid denim jacket he decides to wear to inconspicuously blend him into the bush.
This is absolutely classic bad movie fodder. Full of continuity errors, post-production overload, bad acting and stretching the mechanics of gunfire, it’s a must see for any fan of bad movies. In fact, it may even be the inspiration for this website. Had it been more racist, it may have been more widely distributed at the time in South Africa and would today have the cult status it deserves.
There’s so much to tell you about ‘Operation Hit Squad’ that I’ve already written about 300 words more than I intended to. All you need to know is that you have to see this film if you ever get the opportunity.
