My Friends Need Killing

My Friends Need Killing (1976) Directed By Paul Leder. Starring Greg Mullavey

  Paul "Leadfoot" Leder wins for the greatest title in exploitation history for this epic. It's a bargain basement namploitation flick that astoundingly everyone involved went on to mainstream shit! His daughter directed one of the dumbest flicks of all time, Deep Impact and star Greg Mullavey went on to alot of TV like (ICarly, Charles In Charge and Automan, so there's that). 

Gene plays a disturbed vet haunted by Nam flashbacks (stock footage). After seeing a lot of these psycho war vet flicks I noticed a pattern, almost all of them start off with an easy listening country song, (both Rolling Thunder and The Exterminator). This one has a jaunty, mildly irritating Hellen Reddy style number (which sets up some unpleasantness to come later)! The title song was actually sung by Meredith Mccrae. All of Gene's army buddies are nervous for some reason? Gee I wonder why? 

  His first victim is tied up on a bed and left to slowly bleed to death out of a tube sticking out of his arm, he tells him about all his plans of murder. He wants to track down all his buddies in Nam and kill them one by one for their crimes of legally sanctioned murder. He flies out on a plane as that bouncy 70's flute music plays (everything in this film takes place in bright sunshine)?! Why is it so happy? 

Laugh now, pay later

  One of his pals gets too drunk and talks about a gangbang that happened during Nam with a girl named Leena the Laughing Hyena! When the slappy cornball music is shut off it's replaced by very loud room tone. All of his friends know that he flipped out in Nam, but none of them suspect he is planning on destroying their lives. 

  The most disturbing part of the film happens 30 minutes later as Gene beats the shit out of his pal and then rapes his wife (fully clothed by the way). The awkward jolly music is pumped in again, extremely loud as Gene and his other soon to be murdered friend sight see around Sausalito, Ca and the Golden Gate bridge. The back and forth between happy and depressing is unnerving. It starts to get strange again and slightly homo erotic as he forces his pal to perform Macbeth for him and convinces him to drink wine and pills and then die. In the last few minutes an army buddy plays into his flashback by enacting a scenario that they already went through together (which seems dangerous). It all ends with Gene delivering a baby and his own suicide (which is featured on some box covers)!

With friends like these, who needs friends

  The psychotronic review of this was very negative and Weldon talks about how sick and depressing this film was to him, I didn't find it any worst then any run of the mill excessive 70's TV movie. It is pretty effective and convincing for such a minimal budgeted film. The anti-war message is a timeless one and once again, the mental health industry and the government create victims out of soldiers that fight and die for the American myth.   

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