Eye of the Tiger * (1986, Gary Busey, Yaphet Kotto, Seymour Cassel, Bert Remsen, William Smith) – Classic Movie Review 13,099

Richard Sarafian’s 1986 vigilante action thriller Eye of the Tiger stars the excellent cast of Gary Busey, Yaphet Kotto, Seymour Cassel, Bert Remsen, and William Smith. It’s Busey’s first action vehicle. 

Director Richard Sarafian’s 1986 vigilante action thriller Eye of the Tiger stars the excellent cast of Gary Busey, Yaphet Kotto, Seymour Cassel, Bert Remsen, and William Smith.

So excellent cast and excellent director, then, but there are no new twists to the old vigilante story about a wrongfully incarcerated ex-convict, Vietnam War veteran Buck Matthews (played by main star Gary Busey), returning home from prison and going on the Death Wish-style vengeance rampage after Hell’s Angels kill his wife. So he has to tackle the biker gang and the crooked sheriff (Seymour Cassel) protecting them.

Eye of the Tiger is mostly overplayed and underwritten, but there is some tolerable action, and a good cast of character actors (Yaphet Kotto, Seymour Cassel, Bert Remsen, William Smith) to maintain interest.

It started as a spec script called Midnight Vengeance, written by Vietnam veteran Michael Thomas Montgomery.

The Scotti Brothers, founders of a music and film company, were interested. As owners of Survivor’s record label, they had rights to the hit song ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and decided it would make a good vehicle for an action film, and renamed Midnight Vengeance. They marketed the film as being inspired by the song.

In 1982, Sylvester Stallone enlisted the American band Survivor to write a song for Rocky III, after Queen refused permission to use ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.’Eye of the Tiger; was written by the guitarist Frankie  Sullivan and the keyboardist Jim Peterik, conceiving a riff based on chord changes to mirror the timing of punches.  The title came from a line from Rocky’s coach, Apollo Creed: ‘You had that eye of the tiger, man, the edge. You gotta get it back’, which Stallone took from the 1969 film A Dream of Kings, starring Anthony Quinn.

The film was budgeted at about $3 million and shot in the Los Angeles area, including Valencia, in 1986, and released on November 28, 1986 (US) and December 26, 1986 (UK).

Eye of the Tiger is directed by Richard Sarafian, runs 92 minutes, is made and released by Scotti Brothers Pictures, is written by Michael Thomas Montgomery, is shot by Peter Lyons Collister, is produced by Tony Scotti (producer), Ben Scotti (executive producer) and Herb Nanas (executive producer), is scored by Don Preston, and designed by Wayne Springfield.

The cast are Gary Busey as Buck Matthews, Yaphet Kotto as J B Deveraux, Seymour Cassel as Sheriff, Bert Remsen as Father Healey, Denise Galik as Christie Matthews, William Smith as Blade, Kimberlin Brown as Dawn Judith Barsi as Jennifer Matthews, Joe Brooks as Jake, Jorge Gil as Jamie, Cooper Huckabee as Roger, Ted Markland as Floyd, Thomas Rosales Jr as Jamie’s relative, Timothy Scott as Deputy, and Eric Boles as Doctor.

It’s the film that set Busey off what he calls the third stage of his career, with Eye of the Tiger his first action vehicle. After a period of personal problems, he dropped from 240 pounds to 180 pounds thanks to swimming, weightlifting and a low carb diet supervised by bodybuilder Franco Columbu.

Richard Caspar Sarafian (April 28, 1930 – September 18, 2013) is best known as the director of the 1971 film Vanishing Point, as well as Run Wild, Run Free in 1969, Man in the Wilderness in 1971, and The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing in 1973.

Gary Busey returns for more action in Bulletproof (1987).

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,099

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