merklekranz With a threadbare jungle mercenary script, a touch of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", zero nudity, and zero blood, this is a tough watch. Character development is nil, and the film is mostly aimless walking around in the jungle, by men who we care nothing about. The highlights would include a game of chicken with grenades, and a surprise ending. The lowlights would include a bloodless decapitation, gratuitous explosions, a stock footage cheetah, and a plot that hinges on someone having a million dollar price on their head, who we know nothing about. "Tough to Kill" is tough to watch, for obvious reasons. Not recommended, even for admirers of low budget exploitation. - MERK

Michael_Elliott Tough to Kill (1978) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Italian war flick has Luc Merenda playing our military hero who joins a bunch of cut-throats being led by the evil Major Hagerty (Donald O'Brien). Soon the men head out through the jungles into enemy territory so that they can blow up a dam but along the way they learn that one of the men are wanted and have a million dollar price tag on their head. While this film is certainly forgettable in the long run, there's no doubt that it's pretty entertaining to watch. D'Amato does a pretty good job at keeping everything moving after a slow first twenty-minutes. We don't really get much character development but the actors at least bring their characters to life and make them fun to watch. The film has an ultra low budget so one shouldn't expect anything on a grand scale but I admire the film for doing so much for such a little price tag. The movie manages to be entertaining thanks in large part to the actors who really dig deep in their roles and at least seem to be having fun. Pretty much each character is some sort of stereotype but that's okay simply because of the fun factor. O'Brien really stands out as the evil Major who likes proving his braveness by challenging men to stand on top of a grenade. Merenda is also entertaining as the rebel fighting who stands up for whatever is right and doesn't care who he battles. The actual story isn't the greatest in the world but it at least gives the characters something to do and gets us through the 90-minutes. There's certainly nothing groundbreaking or special here but if you're looking for some Euro fun then this movie is certainly better than a lot of the stuff out there.

dbborroughs Story of a mercenary who infiltrates a mercenary army in order to kidnap one of the other soldiers and bring him back for a reward. the problem is that several other men find out whats going on and insist on being cut in. Once on the march the group begins to turn on each other. Slow to start action film is actually pretty good. If you have the patience to get through the first 25 minutes or so you'll find that the characters are all set up so that once things get into motion people are more than just cardboard cut outs. The print I saw is one of the ones supplied to the now defunct BCI by Crown International and its slightly choppy and seems to have been put together from a number of video sources. I mention this because I've read some reviews of this film that have mentioned poor video quality, which would be understandable since this is the type of film that probably wad a heavy renter in the VHS days and since many budget DVD companies sometimes use VHS copies as their sources you're going to get a warn picture. I like the movie and think that if you like B movie action films you'll want to give it a shot

dwpollar 1st watched 11/23/2002 - 5 out of 10(Dir-Joe D'Amato): Ok action-adventure film with unexpected twist at the end. This Italian film seems like it's trying to sell itself as a Rambo-type movie but it's less of a shoot-em-up and more of an adventure. A `white' mercenary is hired to be one of the guys in the troup but then return an enemy or the proof that this enemy is dead. As members of the troupe catch on to what's really happening they become an interested party to the mercenary's task but then they start dropping like flies and we're left with only a handful. This movie is more about the interaction of that handful, but the problem is that their actions are predictable and characteristic of their type of character in the film. So we basically know what's going to happen until the surprise ending. The ending is kind of a retaliation to how the movie treated the blacks in the story, and this part I liked. But overall, the whole movie is not quite worth the effort to get to the end.