Jobic Wong's JUNGLE HEAT (1989) is a low budget HK/American (I assume) co-production. The film is set in a Vietnam war and stars Sam Jones, an incredibly uncharismatic actor, as a tough instructor who has to send a bunch of younger soldiers for some mission to the war. They go through the training and soon we are already in the jungles. There's a very thin and almost non-existant plot there, but we all know what this film was made for: to show some jungle violence and gore and NOTHING else.
The film is laughably bad and horrible and the actors are of course equally uninteresting. On any real cinematic level this film is pure trash and junk and gets 1/10 from me. But as a jungle adventure exploitationer, the film is pretty strong.
There is violence which is definitely gratuitous and they always use as juicy close ups as possible. The "skinning by acid" torture scene is pretty sadistic and the effects are fine even though the budget must have been very small. Other scenes of carnage include the usual gun fights, excessive blood letting and one severely SICK killing of a real rat: They set the poor animal on fire and let it run through the room in agony as the soldiers laugh and watch it running and setting some convicts on fire as they've poured gasoline on them. But I really can't understand a live creature had to be tortured to death for a film like this.
The film is pretty rare and unknown and not so many people have seen it. The Greek VHS is the one I saw and it is supposed to be uncut, too, unlike the British version. This film belongs to the genre I don't appreciate at all because the film lacks all the possible cinematic merits or positive things and so is complete nonsense on any other level than the gore 'n carnage level. And the fact is that even exploitation films like this can (and should) be cinematically interesting and have at least a little talented director, cinematographer and so on. Fans of trash and junk will probably want to check this out as well, but I'm not sure I'll see it again ever.
