Mill Creek Entertainment is looking to make your summer as action packed as possible with a three bill economy blu-ray of some pretty nifty action pictures. Allowing a bang for your bucks, “Payback Time Triple Feature” garners action movie essentials that should allow for a great afternoon with popcorn and some beer. First up there’s the very good (and my personal favorite) “Blind Fury,” a solid remake of a classic “Zatoichi” movie starring Rutger Hauer as a blind Vietnam Veteran Nick Parker, who is taught the art of the sword after being rendered disabled.
When Nick returns home to re-visit his old army buddy, he’s thrust in to a plot involving his old friend working with violent gangsters. When he and his wife are murdered, Nick is tasked with caring for their orphaned son and bringing him to relatives. But with the gangsters in pursuit, the cross country journey is going to prove difficult. With Nick’s knowledge of the samurai, though, he’ll prove he has the leg up even without his sight. Chuck Norris visits the science fiction genre with “Silent Rage,” a rare entry in to genre acting from Norris who is almost always about army and lone gun men movies.
This one finds him tracking down a genetically engineered super human and axe murderer who is running a rampage through the country slaughtering people in search of the doctor who revived him. With the help of his martial arts skills, Norris as Sheriff Stevens makes it his mission to put him down once and for all. Finally, there’s the seventy movie to end all seventy movies, as Jan Michael Vincent stars as Carrol Jo Hummer, an independent truck driver who runs afoul an organized crime syndicate and fights for survival with his wits and some gun fire.
“White Line Fever” is a great capper to the trio of action films, with Jan Michael Vincent having a good time as the film’s rough and tumble hero. All three films are uncut and without special features, the caveat being that the purchase depends on how much you want these films, altogether. They’re really re-issues with transfers from older DVD releases without any restoration, so you can either take them as is, or wait for another special edition down the road. For what they are, it’s a fairly decent release and a good place holder until someone restores these films and allow them special editions for collectors.