Matty takes a look at David DeCoteau’s agreeable action caper.

David DeCoteau’s second girl power action flick, AMERICAN RAMPAGE is a permissible quickie but certainly a step down from the blistering Lady Avenger (1988). Lensed over nine days in the gap between Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988) and Dr. Alien (1988) — his final assignments for Empire Pictures [1] — DeCoteau had previously lobbied to direct American Rampage producer Raj Mehrotra’s slasher flick, Hack-O-Lantern (1988). As Hack-O-Lantern was already promised to future erotic thriller maestro Jag Mundhra, Mehrotra — a real estate and grocery store magnate with a side hustle in B-movies — hired DeCoteau for this, a so-called “female Lethal Weapon (1987)”. The plan was to shoot a promo reel for Cannes and the AFM. However, by day two, more and more ideas and more and more pages of script were being flung at DeCoteau, resulting in him and Mehrotra deciding to just make the entire movie instead.        

Given it was pretty much written on the fly, said script doesn’t quite slot together as a whole — and the issue is further compounded by the hasty, on set rewrites necessitated by DeCoteau and Mehrotra having to fire members of the supporting cast due to supposedly lax attitudes and difficult behaviour. Nevertheless, American Rampage sports solid and thematically appropriate technical credentials. The film boasts a gritty, down-on-the-street immediacy fostered by its guerilla-style use of various scuzzy L.A. locations. The mall-based drug deal in particular is a brilliantly staged feat of low-budget ingenuity. Every shot is stolen, and the entire sequence is capped off by a DeCoteau cameo which, in hindsight, feels like the prolific auteur relishing his own audacity, as if he can’t quite believe he got away with it either.     

Further interest comes in the form of DeCoteau and trusted DP Howard Wexler’s blasts of Friedkin-esque handheld photography; an approach as pragmatic and cost conscious as it is visually stirring and conceptually fitting. Indeed, the richest pleasure of American Rampage is witnessing the fun DeCoteau has playing cops and robbers, wryly yet affectionately navigating such police flick tropes as: maverick detectives (star Kary Jane – wooden but aesthetically striking); career burnout; stuffy psychologists (token name Troy Donahue, whom DeCoteau hired again for Dr. Alien); irritable desk sergeants; and assorted gimmicky criminals. Sadly — and somewhat inevitably — the action, while competent, is hindered by the cheap n’ cheerful circumstances of American Rampage’s production. Mostly front loaded, the film’s immediate burst of guns, explosions, and car chases quickly gives way to meandering scenes of waffle and flagrant padding devices (protracted nudity, lots of talking and walking). Jane’s eponymous rampage at the end, though, when she lays waste to a barnful of baddies with a combat shotgun, is top notch and houses some amazingly gratuitous squib work.

DeCoteau’s salary for American Rampage was $400 plus 10% of whatever Mehrotra could broker for the U.S. distribution advance. DeCoteau ultimately walked away with $3,500 after Mundhra sold the film. Alas, American Rampage remained unreleased in the states until bargain bin legends Simitar issued it on DVD on 10th March 1998 — exactly one week after DeCoteau’s Shrieker (1998) hit U.S. video store shelves. Still, Mehrotra insists the film was a big hit in Japan, Germany and France, and it’s since appeared on Blu-ray via Massacre Video.

USA ● 1989 ● Action ● 85mins/93mins (extended version — incorporates scene from French VHS release)

Troy Donahue, Kary Jane ● Dir. David DeCoteau ● Wri. Ross A. Perron, additional material by David DeCoteau

[1] Assault of the Killer Bimbos was shot in October 1987, American Rampage February 1988, and Dr. Alien May 1988.