Revenge and vigilante justice, those acts so heinous and soul-polluting in real life, make great wish-fulfillment movie material! Everyone loves revenge, especially when parents put the hurt on those who have violated their family. From VIRGIN SPRING to DEATH WISH, EYE FOR AN EYE to LAST HOUSE, what are your favorite movies about moms and pops taking the law into their own hands and dishing out the cruel-and-unusual on slimy child-victimizing punks?

Spoiler for OPEN SEASON (1974).

Of course, the card isn't played until the last frames, but OPEN SEASON is one of my favorites in this subgenre. Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law, and Richard Lynch play three sociopaths who abduct businessman Alberto de Mendoza and his lover Cornelia Sharpe and take them to a remote cabin for a little R&R. It's a cruel little movie with a scalding demoument that serves up some tough love to these scoundrels. Watch it with the whole family!

. . . one of my favorite films in this genre is Todd Field's IN THE BEDROOM (2001) which was a big art house in the year of release, plus gathering up 5 Academy Award nominations . . . sold as a film about how a family handles grief, told at the stately art film pace of 138 minutes, the movie shows its hand toward the end when the "revenge and vigilante" theme comes into focus and a father (at the urging of his wife) exacts his pound of flesh for the death of his son, leaving you to wonder about the actual result of his action . . .

A nice parental justice flick I saw recently is George C. Scott's RAGE (1972).

SPOILERS

After his son dies due to the military testing a airborne chemical on his ranch, Scott goes crazy and starts blowing away anyone who he deems responsible. Good stuff.

END SPOILERS

Also, you can't forget the genre classic VIGILANTE.

I'm quite fond of Joe, with a curmudgeonly Peter Boyle adrift in Greenwich Village, intent on rescuing his daughter from hippies by any means necessary. Kind of like The Searchers but with a very different ending.

I guess FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE would count in this category.


marc

That wasn't quite the plot of JOE, but the film still offers an ironic variation on the theme of this thread.

Which leads me to another variation on it...TAXI DRIVER (1976), in which Travis Bickle (De Niro) kind of "adopts" child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) and goes after her pimp and his gang. Again, much like THE SEARCHERS, an obvious (and stated) inspiration.

(OK, for the record, in JOE, it was businessman Dennis Patrick whose daughter runs away and joins hippies and Patrick kills her hippie boyfriend in an act of rage and it's his casual confession of this to Joe in a bar that leads to Joe latching onto him and prompting adventures in the East Village and the tragic, violent ending.)

You're right of course, Brian. I was being sloppy in haste. :wacko:

Another very good little movie along these lines is a TV movie with Brian Dennehy called A Father's Justice. His daughter is kidnapped by German terrorists and he circumvents the "official" procedure. It's done realistically and is pretty tense. Available on budget DVD.

I just received (but haven't yet watched) THE HUMAN FACTOR, in which George Kennedy goes apesheet on some terrorists that murder his family. Sic 'em, George!

Ah, yes, THE HUMAN FACTOR is definitely a fine fit into this category. Whoever sent you that must be really cool.

COMMANDO (1985) - Arnold Schwarzenegger outshoots an entire army of Latin American soldiers/rebels/counterrevolutionaries in order to rescue his daughter, Alyssa Milano.

The original Friday the 13th...in a way. ;)

Unfortunately, I think Chris was looking for good parental revenge movies :P. IIRC William posted a somewhat positive review of this film in the neverending thread, but I don't share his mild enthusiasm for the film. IMO the best part about it is Sybil Danning's intro to the film on the VHS tape, in which she poses with weapons and gives a reactionary monologue in an attempt to tie in THE HUMAN FACTOR with the issues of the '80s.

John Landis' "MASTERS OF HORROR" season 2 entry FAMILY fits this bill quite nicely.

Vincent

Another variation of THE SEARCHERS - Paul Schrader's 1979 film HARDCORE. George C.Scott is excellent as a man whose daughter has been swallowed up into the sleazy world of pornography and he'll do whatever it takes to rescue her.

While it has been a long time since I've seen the movie I do seem to recall enjoying Sidney Furie's 1973 film HIT!. Billy Dee Williams stars as a federal agent whose daughter has died of a heroin overdose. When he feels justice has been denied he assembles his own guerilla strike team to take revenge on the Marseille syndicate importing the smack. Wasn't his team composed of others who had also lost loved ones to drugs and like him wished to extract payback? The movie has a solid supporting cast that includes Richard Pryor, Gwen Welles, Warren Kemmerling, Janet Brandt, Sid Melton, Norman Burton, and Paul Hampton. I don't think HIT! has found its way it to DVD as of yet, but I wish it would.

A HK entry for this list would be Dennis Yu's THE BEASTS (Chinese title: MOUNTAIN DOGS), which combines plot elements from THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Chen Sing plays a father out the avenge the rape of his daughter and murder of his son.

Papa's Revenge viewing Round 1 was Saturday night...

Starting with DEATH WISH. I still think the movie drags as the cops hunt for Kersey, but the increasingly muddled ideology makes up for it. The movie knows it's confused and tries to pretend it's a STRAW DOGS sort of meditation with no easy answers. The funniest part is when Kersey wanders through a cocktail party at which fellow "knee-jerk liberals" are discussing whether or not the vigilante is racist. Instead of confronting the issue, director Michael Winner simply has his antihero walk past two people talking about it! Absolute highlight: one of the rapist robber "Freaks" stopping in Kersey's apartment building stairwell to spraypaint the wall and announcing "Hold on! I'm gonna do a thing!"

THE HUMAN FACTOR (or as the title screen has it, THE "HUMAN" FACTOR): is deadly dull... until George Kennedy goes bonkers in the last 15 minutes. The climactic action setpiece in a grocery store makes up for the preceeding hour of Kennedy trying to run on staircases, and talking to sweaty guys in offices. There is some sort-of hilarious long-winded explanation of '70s computer criminal databases and early internet. Kennedy's computer is called 9-11. Why Pepsi has product placement on every single set, is anybody's guess. Has Morricone's striking action score ever been released in full?

OPEN SEASON (AKA- THE RECON GAME): Sadly, the best of these movies was one I could only rent on a junky bootleg that looked like someone was pointing a camcorder at their TV. The script makes interesting choices about when to reveal plot points, right up to and including the very ending. In a dinnertable scene, the kidnappers party and joke like it's a Spring Break picture, the kidnapped Alberto de Mendoza finally breaks down and offers to use his position at a bank to pay the men anything they want. They just laugh and ignore him. Suddenly, everyone on-screen and in the audience realizes they have no idea what's going on. Wacky hillbilly music used to ironically jolly effect in the score by Ruggero Cini puts one in mind of TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!

I put up a hilarious clip from the grocery store scene on YouTube. Check out the reaction of the kid when his mom fires away with the machine gun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4YUVloT_U

William, my friends and I agreed when the shot of the tot reacting to a gun going off 12 inches from his face popped up in the movie that it was the moment which justified sitting through everything that went before!

SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY aka VENGEANCE IS MINE (1974) possibly fits the bill, a tidy little slice of Canadian exploitation with Ernest Borgnine as a farmer who takes it upon himself to torment and torture a gang of hoodlums who try to take over his home.

I picked this up during my assault on the blow out sales at Hollywood Video a few months back.

There are some aspects of the film I liked. Borgnine did a nice job in the lead role, and the screenplay bordered on excellent. Unfortunately, the film was not well executed. The direction was completely lifeless, and the casting decisions were atrocious. The gang of bad guys consists of two geriatrics and a "crazy, young punk" who is obviously pushing 40. There's also a memorable scene between strict, churchgoing Borgnine and his equally conservative daughter where he encourages her to put on some music while they work in the kitchen. She puts on a song about raping and beating up women, while the characters happily do their chores in Rockwell painting-type bliss.

The artwork and title make VENGEANCE IS MINE seem like an exploitation movie, but I wouldn't even really classify it as such. It's more of a moral drama with scenes played out between Borgnine and some miscast (and often just plain bad) actors. There isn't really a whole lot of violence, and the little that is there is not well done. This would be a great film for more competent filmmakers to remake, but as it stands I wouldn't recommend it.

And since I've torn down a bunch of films in this thread, but haven't recommended any myself, I'll second the earlier recommendation of William Lustig's VIGILANTE.