PHANTOM SOLDIERS is an extremely rare entry in the Vietnam combat genre of film-making which was dying out at the tail-end of the 1980s. I don't think this movie has come out on DVD or Blu-ray yet and is only available on old VHS releases. It's listed as an Italian/Filipino production although there's little Italian influence here and none of the stars of Italian cinema that you'd expect to see; instead the movie is entirely populated by performers familiar from Filipino cinema, like Mike Monty.
The film is one of dozens of Z-grade B-movies made by Teddy Page, a man who can always be relied upon to deliver cheesy action in spades. PHANTOM SOLDIERS starts out with the best scene of the whole film, in which a platoon of gas mask-wearing soldiers attack a Vietnamese village and proceed to massacre every villager right down to the last child. They also blow up all of the straw huts in endless explosive scenes.
The rest of the film goes downhill from there, but to be honest there would be no way of topping this intense, endlessly violent set-piece which reminded me of similar moments in Stallone's last RAMBO movie. Some American soldiers decide to track down the villains but end up being captured or killed themselves, so another soldier and his men go in to rescue them. What follows is endless jungle action, with a whole slew of extras being machine gunned and blown up. Expect no niceties of plotting, no characterisation, nothing like that, just scenes which remind you a bit of PREDATOR (the soldiers mowing down the jungle after they spot an enemy) and endless low rent action. It really is something to behold.
The film is one of dozens of Z-grade B-movies made by Teddy Page, a man who can always be relied upon to deliver cheesy action in spades. PHANTOM SOLDIERS starts out with the best scene of the whole film, in which a platoon of gas mask-wearing soldiers attack a Vietnamese village and proceed to massacre every villager right down to the last child. They also blow up all of the straw huts in endless explosive scenes.
The rest of the film goes downhill from there, but to be honest there would be no way of topping this intense, endlessly violent set-piece which reminded me of similar moments in Stallone's last RAMBO movie. Some American soldiers decide to track down the villains but end up being captured or killed themselves, so another soldier and his men go in to rescue them. What follows is endless jungle action, with a whole slew of extras being machine gunned and blown up. Expect no niceties of plotting, no characterisation, nothing like that, just scenes which remind you a bit of PREDATOR (the soldiers mowing down the jungle after they spot an enemy) and endless low rent action. It really is something to behold.
