LONE WOLF MCQUADE

Random thoughts while watching LONE WOLF McQUADE (1983).

Ennio Morricone called. He wants his score from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969) back.

Sergio Leone's probably not too happy with all of those tight close-ups of squint eyed heroes and villains that director Steve Carver shamelessly appropriates either.

How tough is Lone Wolf McQuade (Chuck Norris)? He has a pet wolf.

McQuade's a Texas Ranger but he doesn't wear regulation clothes. And his firearms are definitely not State of Texas approved.

McQuade wants to be seen as a Dirty Harry type character. This is represented by his filthy dirty, mud-caked SUV, his pigsty of a home and his cluttered office. He's also saddled with a young, rookie DPS Trooper, Kayo Ramos (Robert Beltran) as a partner, just as Harry was in all of his films.

Barbara Carrera was smoking hot. She would have made a great Bond girl.

Nice to see Sharon Farrell (as McQuade's ex-wife). One of my favorite '60s heart-throbs.

Gotta love the great L.Q. Jones who plays McQuade's mentor and newly retired Ranger, Dakota. But come on, a man named Dakota? I thought that name was strictly reserved for strippers and porn stars.

Also good to see R.G. Armstrong as Ranger Captain Tyler. It looks like Armstrong probably worked two days on the shoot, one day for interiors, one for exteriors but he's always fun to watch even with limited screen time. He looks very much like a man named Dee Scott, a house painter that I worked with on my summer job when I was in high school and college. Mr. Scott taught me a lot about house painting, Clint Eastwood and Paul Harvey. I owe him big time.

Pearl beer is to McQuade what spinach is to Popeye. In one sequence, McQuade is buried alive in his SUV. He's trapped in the remarkably well-lit cabin of the vehicle and he uses a can of Pearl (brewed in Texas in the land of 1100 springs), to revive himself (he drinks some, splashes the rest on his head). Then McQuade fires up his Batmobile-like, super-charged engine and drives the SUV out of the grave.

Pearl is also the only thing keeping McQuade alive. He's never shown eating food of any kind and the only other beverage he consumes is a can of Coke.

Search warrants? Probable cause? Suspects' rights? Forget about 'em. McQuade and Kayo nab a two-bit criminal named Snow (William Sanderson) and, along with Dakota, torture the man for information. As Dirty Harry said, "I'm all broken up about that man's rights."

Now would probably be a good time to mention that one of the villains of the piece is a Mexican, wheelchair bound midget named Falcon (Daniel Frishman), who looks like a miniature Orson Welles and has a revolving wall getaway in his "secret hideout" (actually, his office at the local horse track).

You know the bad guys are in deep shit when they kill McQuade's wolf.

They're in even deeper shit when they kidnap his daughter.

It's a mystery to me how someone like Chuck Norris ever became popular. He's an absolutely terrible actor, he has no charisma or screen presence whatsoever. His entire film and television career was based solely on his martial arts abilities and his unrelenting drive to play straight arrow tough guys. I know he has a lot of fans but I'm not one of them.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE looks like it was cheaply made. I don't know the actual dollar amount of the budget, but the film made over $12 million worldwide, which is a pretty good return on investment.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE is also PG rated. There's no sex or nudity and all of the violence and gun play is remarkably blood free. I would have preferred a more realistic, R rated film but apparently Norris lobbied for the PG rating in order to make the film accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Smart move.

David Carradine was cast as the main bad guy for one reason and one reason only. It's so he and Norris can stage a climactic kung-fu battle to the death at the end of the film. Carradine uses a lot of the moves he used in his ABC television series, KUNG-FU and while this showdown looks great on paper, it's staged in a spectacularly unimaginative way by director Carver. Ho-hum.

Did I mention the Mexican midget in the wheelchair?

Love how McQuade, Kayo and FBI Agent Jackson (Leon Isaac Kennedy) drive into Mexico (a sovereign, foreign nation) with a truck load of weapons, ninety-percent of which they abandon in a small border town as they set out on foot towards the bad guys hideout and can only take what they can carry. That's a helluva lot of firepower left unaccounted for in a foreign country.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE was the inspiration for Norris's long running CBS television series WALKER, TEXAS RANGER (a series I never watched). The character was changed, of course, but the premise is still the same.

By the way, the Texas Rangers are primarily an investigatory agency. They would never sanction the shoot first, ask questions later approach that McQuade uses at the beginning of the film when he single-handedly guns down (with an Uzi!) a gang of horse thieves.

LONE WOLF MCQUADE is a B movie all the way, the kind of cheap, long-on-action-short-on-plot fodder that filled movie screens across the country in the 1980s. It helped cement Norris's reputation as an action star and box-office draw and it gave work to some good actors in supporting roles. It's a hoot from beginning to end and is recommended only to those viewers who are open to reveling in cinematic cheese from time to time.

And in case you missed it, there's a Mexican midget in a wheel chair.