The Jaguar Project (1988)

The Jaguar Project (1988)
Aka: The Mercenary; Jungle Killers
Original Footage - รับจ้างตาย (Cannibal Mercenary - Thailand, 1988)

 

Starring: Paul John Stanners, Arthur Garrett, Chatchai Plengpanich, Alan English, Sormud Charekchema, Sugud Namchan, Rom Rachan, Lek Songphon
Director: K. Chalong, Hong Lu Wong
Action Director: Bruce Jackson

I found this movie by accident. The other day I was reading through Thomas Weisser’s infamously-inaccurate Asian Cult Cinema looking for hidden gems that might be interesting to watch. One that looked particularly interesting was a Thai movie called Cannibal Mercenary, whose synopsis promised something of a mixture of Apocalypse Now and an Italian cannibal movie, complete with the over-the-top Asian action that us fans love. I looked it up on Youtube and found that it was available under a second title, The Jaguar Project. So I looked that up at the IMDB, and it turns out that The Jaguar Project was the Filmark-Tomas Tang treatment of the aforementioned movie. Since I’m reviewing Filmark movies this month, this change of pace was perfect.

Synopsis [Thai movie] – Okay, so we learn from some inserted footage of Sun Chien in a long blonde wig that there’s a former Thai military officer living in the hills/jungle of Vietnam who’s apparently convinced that the war hasn’t ended and is leading a reign of terror against, well, everybody. We also learn that he’s smuggling heroin hidden in bamboo. Nobody has brought him down yet, so the military turns to a former soldier, Tony. This wasn’t explicit in the Filmark version (granted, I saw it dubbed in Spanish), but apparently Tony’s daughter needs an operation and the only way he can drum up the money for it is to accept the mission. He gets some men together—the rescue team from Predator these guys aren’t—and heads out into the jungle.

After killing some gun-toting backwoods types, our team picks up a native girl who may or may not be a spy (which also reminds me a little of Predator). This new addition to our team of rag-tag heroes affects two members of the platoon in different ways. One guy starts getting plagued with visions of walking in on his wife/girlfriend having sort-of explicit movie sex with another man. Another guy, the one with the sleazy mustache, tries to rape her on no less than three occasions. Hilariously enough, the second attempt results in an act of violence against his penis that I’m still trying to figure out how it happened (did she have mousetrap  hidden down there?). Anyway, they go deeper into the jungle and have more encounters with the bad guys’ goons until they are finally captured and tortured. In the case of two of the good guys, they are also partially devoured by the general’s men (although Tomas Tang’s editor reduces that gruesome twist into a mere background detail). Eventually the female “captive” shows up with a cheap crossbow and some armed men and things go boom and people are brutally killed. The end.

Synopsis [Filmark Footage] – There are three Caucasian guys (one of whom wears military fatigues) who are stationed in Vietnam/Thailand. There’s news of treasure being hidden not too far from where the evil general operates. So they spend their screen time walking around the same Hong Kong botanical garden (or the boondocks of Hong Kong) listening to other movie’s gunfights “nearby” until they finally kill each other. The end.

Much more than Ninja in the Killing Field and Instant Rage, I think the original Thai movie, Cannibal Mercenary, had no need for cheaply-filmed inserts of white people doing stuff. For one, those scenes act more as a story parallel (“…meanwhile, a half mile away from the action…”) than a story complement. I mean, the film has scads of gunplay, cannibalism, graphic violence and even some (undercranked) kung fu. Those things could easily sell a movie by itself. Too bad Tomas Tang didn’t see things the same way. In any case, I think the casual Asian action fan will find something to enjoy in both versions. There is a lot of 80s-style gunplay, where you have dozens of bad guys armed with automatic weapons who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn—one may have a drinking game in which they take a shot every time a bad guy fails to hit one of the good guys with an M-16 while firing from 15 feet away or less. The fighting is of the brawling style, although we get some brutal undercranked muay thai (sort of) near the end and some more (and better) fighting at the climax. People die from explosions despite them being visibly out of the blast radius. It’s the sort of thing that The Expendables celebrated, but presented in a deadpan manner as if the filmmakers had no idea how silly it was. It’s almost kind of sublime when you get right down to it.

But yeah, of the three Filmark movies I’ve seen in the past month, this one was easily the best. It’s dumb and exploitive, but over-the-top and fun. It’s certainly no Eastern Condors or even Angel 2 (I haven’t seen Heroes Shed No Tears so I can’t compare those two).  And people who know me may find it weird that I’m saying this, but I just wished that the cannibalism subplot had been given more attention in The Jaguar Project version.