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When forest guard Jim (Gary Clarke) sees hunter Al (Steve Quinn) gun down Buck
- who had an affair with his wife - & then incinerate the corpse,
unfortunately his radio goes off, & so the killer knows he has an unwanted
witness. & while he goes on a manhunt through the woods, through caves
& over bridges - practically everything the Oregon landscape had to offer -
the forest catches fire due to the burning body, with all sorts of forest
guards & flying firemen trying to stop it.
Finally, Jim reaches his cabin, where he wants to grab his newlywed wife
Lori (Jeannine Riley) to save her from the killer, but instead of bringing her
to safety, she & him both are taken captive by Al.
& while Al muses on what to do with the 2 witnesses, Jim recounts the
events that led to this situation in his mind - how he & Lori exchanged
cabins with fellow forest guard Biff, how they spent a night in town &
first met Al, who proved to be a rather violent & jealous fellow, how they
met Jim's teenage brother Bob who went out hunting, & how they set some
beartraps around the cabin & forgot to put the warning signs up ...
& that seems to be the solution, the beartraps ! A call from tghe forest
guards' head office warning them of the fire & urging them to leave their
cabin seems to come as a blessing, as this way they can lead Al towards a
beartrap & have it spring on him unsuspectedly ... but unfortunately Al is
a experienced hunter who notices the beartrap way too soon, & he rgrows
increasingly angray with the couple, who he leaves only alive because he
doesn't know the way out of the burning woods. But after the 2 make a further
attempt to escape he doesn't even bother about that any more either &
prepares to shoot them, when ... he is shot by teenage Bobby, Jim's kid
brother, who was out in the woods hunting & just had to defend Jim &
Lori. He will however remain deeply disturbed by that incident.
Actually, this is quite a competent action-suspense-movie, that features
some impressive Oregon scenery, great shots of the burning forests - even
thought he fire seems rather separated from the main plot & actors &
fire are never actually seen together -, & some very tense camerawork.
& even though in the second half, when Jim tries to remember what led to
his situation, the picture loses steam a bit, it stays entertaining throughout,
up to the ending that thankfully is not presented as the heroic deed of a
teenager but as a traumatic experience of having to kill a man.
Director Ted V.Mikels soon drifted off into directing very schlocky pictures
- but often very endearing ones as The Corpse Grinders, Blood Orgy of the
She-Devils or Astro Zombies -, but Strike me Deadly is a picture that can
(& should) be taken seriously as a suspense-thriller & judged by its
own merits instead of by one's preconception of Ted V.Mikels (though, on
another level, there is nothing wrong with his later movies):
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