Vietnam, towards the end of the war: Commander Gordon (Sam Jones) is
told by his superiors to hire a bunch of locals as truck drivers for what
is to be a suicide mission (though the truckdrivers are not to know that.
It comes as no wurprise then that the new drivers, commandeered by captain
Nguyen, get into a Vietcong ambush, are taken prisoners, are brutally
dortured, and one of them is killed by filling acid under his skin to skin
him alive. However, when all seems lost, Nguyen, who's nailed to a post by
his hands, manages to free himself (even if it destroys his hands), then
he sets his comrades free as well, and they all make a successful escape. Back
at the base, Nguyen and Gordon get into an argument about the suicide
mission, yet none of the drivers quits his job with the US-army - and
before you mknow it, they are sent on another suicide mission. Halfway
through with the mission, they all learn the war is over and let down
their guard - and of course the Vietcong atacks again - and Nguyen and his
men only barely make it back alive, all but Richard. Back home, Nguyen
meets Richard's girlfriend, a prostitute who was hoping for Richard to
make her an honorablw woman. She persuades him and the others in his unit
to go on a mission to free Richard. Nguyen turns to Gordon for help, but
since the war is over, the US-army refuses, sending Nguyen and company on
their mission by themselves. Nguyen and friends try to get Richard free
from the Vietcong via a middleman, but when that guy is shot by the
Vietcong they know they have to do it the hard way ... and in the ensuing
fight in the caves where Richard is held and of course tortured, Nguyen
and men experience heavy losses (including one of the men being sawed in
half), but they manage to spring Richard free, and when being pursued by
the Vietcong, the US army led by Gordon finally intervenes, gunning down
the pursuers. Nguyen's men arrive home alive, but with hardly a penny
among themselves since they have spent all paying the (now dead)
middleman. When Richard hears that, he is overcome by built and thus signs
up for a suicidal motorbike race that would end all the men's financial
shortcomings. And wouldn't you know it, he dies at the race. Marie gets
the money he was promised up front, but in a dramatic gesture she throws
it away ... making his sacrifice pointless by doing so. By the
1980's, war movies in general have grown increasingly gory - not too
surprisingly though since war is a gory business -, but even within this
gory genre, Jungle Heat is a film that pushes things to the
extreme: The film is filled with gore effects so blunt, crude and
over-the-top one is constantly reminded of Herschell Gordon Lewis's wilder
films, and there are virtually no interesting characters to shift the
attention away from the film's blood-and-guts, and the story is as
formulaic and funtional. This all of course does not make Jungle Heat
a classic of gore cinema, it lacks subtlety, irony, hindsight and
originality to become that, but in its simplicity and predictability it's
a great party movie - provided you are partying with the right kind of
crowd.
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