Our feature this week wastes little time to get up to speed as we're barely past the opening credits before our professed hero is being hassled by the authorities. Pulled over and asked to step out of his truck by Sheriff Jesse (David Canary), a wary Johnny Firecloud (Victor Mohica) complies with this seemingly tired routine. Finding no violations with the vehicle, Jesse soon makes one by kicking out the taillight. Fed up, Johnny, who knows the real reason behind this constant harassment, scoffs at Jesse, telling him he has "the balls of a mouse" and is nothing more than a paid stooge for Old Man Colby (Ralph Meeker) -- a local fat-cat rancher, whose influence is like a malignant tumor on the community, and whose hatred for Johnny knows no bounds.

Seems that before Johnny went off to fight in Vietnam, he and Colby's daughter, June (Christina Hart), were lovers. But being the bigot and all around no-good-nik that he is, unbeknownst to the couple, Colby intercepted and destroyed all communications between the two after Johnny shipped out. And after several letters went unanswered, both broken-hearted parties assumed the relationship was over. Unaware of her father's treachery, June has been wallowing around the bottom of a liquor bottle ever since, and after Johnny's hitch was up, he returned home and quickly found out that Colby was still holding a massive grudge and was determined to make the returning veteran's life miserable on every front imaginable.

The only reason Johnny sticks around at all is to be near his father, White Eagle (Frank DeKova), the chief of the local reservation tribe. But Johnny seems embarrassed by his old man, and constantly refuses to acknowledge his heritage. It doesn't help matters that his father spends most of his time in the local bar, perpetually snockered, and will do almost anything to get himself another drink. And Colby's goons, who are full of suggestions, take sadistic pleasure in embarrassing the elder, smearing his face with lipstick for war-paint and making him dance for another shot of whiskey ... When Johnny tries to stop this and take White Eagle home, Colby gives the signal and the goons quickly turn on the son. Outnumbered, Johnny takes a beating, and while they wait for him to dance in his father's stead, they don't realize that all Johnny is doing is using the respite to get his second wind...

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." --  H. L. Mencken

Like a lot of [in]famous film-exploitationeers, producer Dave Friedman learned the fundamental tools of the filmmaking trade in the Army Signal Corps ... After getting out of the service, he first got a job promoting for a carnival, then owned and promoted his own side-show, and then landed a job as a press agent for Paramount Pictures' Chicago office in the early 1950's. That lasted until the carnie saw-dust in his veins lured him away from the mainstream to Modern Films and Kroger Babb -- the ultimate cinema-barker of his generation. It was Babb who pioneered the art of Road-Showing: where the featured forbidden film was only a small part of the production. Coupled with a round-table of speakers, Q&A's, live demonstrations (-- including incidents of shooting at audience volunteers to prove the effectiveness of bullet-proof vests), and pamphlets and How-To guides sold in the lobby, it was a three-ring, P.T. Barnum type atmosphere brought into the hard tops and movie houses. Using blitzkrieg tactics, advance agents went in first to inundate the venues with propaganda and ballyhoo. Then ringers were sent in to stir up controversy, and some producers even swore out injunctions to stop their own shows to amp up the publicity. It was all about the tease. And the tease was all about getting more butts into the seats.

Friedman got in on the tail-end of this type of road-show, and when Babb decided to call it quits after touring an Italian version of Uncle Tom's Cabin (-- that had the production design of Gone with the Wind but a soundtrack where everyone sounded like Chico Marx), Friedman bought him out. Needing a new film to distribute, enter fledgling filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis. And together, these two hit the ground running by turning out several cheap but profitable "Nudie-Cuties" like Lucky Pierre and Boin-n-g. Sensing the end of the Nudies was nigh with the advent of the "Roughie" the duo switched tactics, kept in the nudity, and added gallons and gallons of fake gore for their Blood Trilogy -- Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and Color me Blood Red. Eventually, though, all that blood started to curdle and coagulate and the partnership hemorrhaged out over creative differences -- Friedman thought their product needed more polish to compete for the dwindling exploitation markets, while Lewis didn't see the need to lessen the profits by spending any more money on these no-frills productions.

Leaving his former partner and Chicago behind after an amicable split, Friedman moved to Hollywood, where he found himself a niche in the late '60s and '70s in the Soft-X market with fellow sexploitationeers like Russ Meyer, Lee Frost, and Harry Novak. And if a major studio needed any kind of X-rated inserts for their films, Friedman was the first one they called. But as hardcore started to catch on and draw less heat from the authorities, and mainstream films started to push well past certain boundaries of decency to never look back, the specialized markets for Friedman's films quickly dried up ... The writing on the wall was obvious, and after enduring a particularly unpleasant experience with the financiers of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, so much so that he had his name removed from the credits, Friedman knew the days of the Soft-X were numbered. 

Needing a new genre to exploit, Friedman ultimately decided to cash in on the popularity of some hicksploitation classics like Walking Tall, and combine it with the counter-culture ass-kicking delivered by Billy Jack ... Tom Laughlin's tale about a half-breed Indian who defends a commune of hippies against a corrupt sheriff and a bunch of rednecks was an exclamation point to a rash of revisionist films that began to question the Anglo-centric version of the wild, wild west. More highbrow fair like Little Big Man tried to tell both sides fairly, while films like Soldier Blue, which kinda plays out like a long episode of F-Troop until the concluding Peckinpahesque-like massacre of a Native village, where it suddenly becomes an atrocity picture as the camera seldom flinches during the saber-skewering, raping and pillaging, are a little more scathing with their message about who were the real savages. The 1970's saw a glut of these films, but it was nothing new. You can trace the Redman's Revenge genre as far back as the silents, the most famous being Alan Crosland's Massacre that really set the template for all that followed:

Debuting in 1934, Massacre was the tale of Joe Thunderhorse, who had denounced his heritage by exploiting it for fame and fortune in several entertainment ventures. Making his way home for the funeral of his father -- the chief of the local tribe, Thunderhorse sees the deplorable conditions of life on the reservation and the exploitation of the people by the entrenched corruption of the bilking government officials (-- played by Charles Middleton -- Ming the Merciless!, and Sidney Toler -- Charlie Chan!). While trying to put a stop to this legally with the "White-Man's Law", Thunderhorse is thwarted at every turn. And as things escalate, his sister is brutalized and branded by the bad guys. That's the last straw for Thunderhorse, who reclaims his birthright and exacts a bloody, pre-code revenge. Alas, there is no happy ending. For as the movie ends, Thunderhorse, wanted for murder, is a fugitive from the law and disappears into the wilderness.

Screenwriter Wilton Denmark doesn't stray very far from that template for Johnny Firecloud, but adds a few tweaks of originality to seriously muddy the waters on a few characters. For a director, Friedman turned to long time collaborator William Castleman -- who scored almost all of Friedman's features. And for the grue F/X for the massacre that was the centerpiece of this morality play, Friedman borrowed Joe Blasco from the Ilsa production, and for a guy known mostly for doing make-up for situational comedies, he sure knew how to tear up a body and slather on the blood. Striking a deal with 20th Century Fox for the foreign distributions rights -- Friedman's Entertainment Ventures Inc. would handle it domestically -- the budget swelled to $200000, easily the largest budget for any EVI produced project and it shows on the screen, most obviously in the quality of the veteran cast members and the expansive Cinemascope.

Turns out Johnny Firecloud was to be Friedman's first and last shot at legitimacy. Seeing how badly his contemporaries were being treated by the major studios, EVI seriously cut back on production, and even though he still has an office in Hollywood, the producer has since retired back to Alabama ... According to John McCarty's interview in The Sleaze Merchants, Friedman claimed he got out of the business because there was no business left to be in. "The whole secret to exploitation ... was the carnival tease: 'Boy, we didn't get to see it this week, but next week they're really gonna show us,'" Friedman says. "With hardcore, they give away the third act the minute the curtain is raised; and after you've seen the guy ejaculate and the girl fellate him, What else can you do?" Friedman considered all of this bad show business, and with the burgeoning X-rated video market, all the X-rated theaters closed up, marking the sad end to this type of filmmaking and promotion. 

Was Johnny Firecloud a worthy capper to this storied exploitation career? Well, while it is definitely offbeat, and it has a few moments of brilliance, you can already tell that the magic, if not already gone, was rapidly dwindling away...

...Back in the bar, Johnny manages to get a few good licks in before the odds overwhelm him. But then, strangely enough, Sheriff Jesse breaks it up and safely escorts the bloodied Johnny and White Eagle out of the bar and lets them go ... Taking his apologetic father back to the reservation, the bitter Johnny isn't listening. Once there, Johnny gets more abandonment grief from Nenya (Sacheen Littlefeather), an old friend who came back to the reservation to help her people as a teacher. When she asks Johnny why he came back, he simply states that he had no where else to go.

The next day, when Johnny gets word that June would like to see him, in not the wisest of moves, he heads out to Colby's ranch, alone, to find out why she dumped him. Meeting up in the barn, they fight, but there's still a spark between them and the couple do their best to rekindle it by going for a roll in the hay. Unfortunately, when Colby catches them in the act, he orders his men to tie Johnny to the fence and then proceeds to whip him bloody. Again, Johnny is saved by the timely intervention of the Sheriff. But it's Johnny who is arrested on a trumped-up trespassing charge and thrown in jail ... While treating the prisoners wounds, Jesse confesses that everything Johnny has said about him was true but there's nothing he can do to stop Colby. Seems the rancher found out Jesse was dishonorably discharged from the army for being a homosexual -- caught in the act the day the conflict ended, and the fear of exposure keeps him turning a blind-eye on Colby's vendetta. Jesse also tells Johnny it was Colby who intercepted all the correspondence while he was away, and worse, turns out June was pregnant at the time but lost their baby. He doesn't come right out and say it, but Johnny's perceived abandonment and her father's constant abuse caused the miscarriage.

With that harsh revelation, Johnny's problems quickly go from bad to worse when White Eagle finally sobers up, dons his ceremonial gear, and goes to Colby to try and negotiate his son's release. Colby laughs the old man off at first, but the Chief's persistence soon ticks him off to the point that he's suddenly in the mood for an old-fashioned lynching! Horrified, Johnny watches from his jail cell window as his father is stood up in a pick-up bed and noosed to a tree. A deputy (Jason Ledger) tries to stop it, but he's too late as the truck rolls away and the rope snaps taut. Of course, Colby will have this written off as an accident, despite the deputy's protests to the contrary. Back in the jail, when Johnny offers his hand in thanks for trying to save his father, he uses the ruse to knock out the guard and make his escape.

Fairly certain that Johnny will come looking for him, Colby sends out his goons to find him first and put him in the ground. Figuring he'd hide out at the reservation, they don't find Johnny there but do find Nenya at the school. When she refuses to help them, things quickly turn sinister as all six men encircle her, their intentions clear as they start tearing her clothes off, and then the gang rape begins in earnest ... After Johnny finishes off the customary funeral rights by cremating his father, he finds what's left of Nenya, who fingers Colby's men before she dies. That's the last straw for Johnny, who swears a blood oath of vengeance, and the day of deadly reckoning with Colby is now at hand.

He starts out by taking care of Colby's goons first, and dispatches them he does most gruesomely. The first, the one most directly responsible for his father's death, is scalped. The second captured has a bag filled with rattlesnakes tied around his head. Number three gets a tomahawk facial, while the fourth, who initiated the gang rape, is tied up with a lit bundle of dynamite strapped between his legs. Boom. And then there was the guy who appeared to be masturbating while watching a bunch of Indians being massacred on the TV. Weird, weird scene. Anyway, he winds up buried up to his neck with a mouth full of gravel -- and I'm fairly certain the circling vultures have already plucked out his eyes as Johnny leaves him to die.

Experiencing an extreme amount of pleasure watching Colby squirm as his men are picked off, Sheriff Jesse makes a token effort to track down his fugitive. And that's why he's nowhere near the ranch when Johnny catches Colby in the barn alone. And before he knows what hit him, Colby is strung up by the neck, and as he tries to keep breathing, Johnny alternates between whipping him bloody and punching him in the junk. But before Johnny can deal a deathblow, several hired hands stumble upon them and run Johnny off.

Humiliated, Colby orders Jesse to bring Johnny in or he'll let his little secret out of the closet. Unsure of what to do, Jesse takes the time to escort June, who has denounced her father, to the nearest bus stop. She offers to return and do whatever she can to help bring her father down; all Jesse has to do is ask. But will he? Now completely torn, Jesse presses on and tracks his fugitive into the familiar looking desert near Vasquez Rocks (-- ya know, where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn), and when he finally catches up to him, the two men trapped in Colby's web of hate face off for one final showdown...

The End?

When Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his Academy Award for The Godfather, he wanted to draw attention to the American Indian Movement's current efforts during the Siege at Wounded Knee and protest Hollywood's propagating the mistreatment of Native Americans in film. His sentiments might have been genuine, but his chosen representative was not. In fact, it only added another sad chapter in Hollywood duplicity ... Ms. Littlefeather, whose real name is Maria Cruz, was an actress/model of Hispanic descent, and her showbiz debut came when she was a finalist for the Miss American Vampire contest held by Dan Curtis to help promote House of Dark Shadows, the feature film version of his gothic soap opera. And less than six months after her abbreviated Oscar appearance in '73, Hugh Hefner had her posing nude for a pictorial in the October issue of Playboy. And that, along with a few bit-parts in several features, and one hideous, gravity-defying boob-job, brought her to Friedman's attention, who had no qualms about exploiting her notoriety to promote his film -- even though her role, when not counting the pivotal rape/murder scene, is probably less than a minute of screen time.

As I said before, Johnny Firecloud almost succeeds as an offbeat gem on the evils of bigotry -- but that's mostly due to the homophobic aspects, thanks to Canary's understated performance, and not the racial hatred. On the Native American front, it makes no great strides and ultimately sputters and fails, falling into the same old genre trappings; the Natives here are played by a Puerto Rican (Johnny), a Mexican (Nenya), and an Italian (White Eagle) -- and come to think of it, I'm almost positive that these are the only three Indians we ever see during the entire film. I mean, is Colby just picking on Johnny or what? And the whole revenge angle is stretched a little thin because, frankly, after your lover has been abused and brow-beaten into miscarrying your child, your father has been humiliated and lynched, and your best friend has been brutally raped and murdered, and then, and only then, after all of that sequentially happens, do you take the law into your own hands for a little biblical payback, as a viewer, you might have a little trouble rooting for the guy because you have to wonder out loud -- What in the hell took you so damn long?

For the record, I have this same justification problem with almost all revenge flicks. Seriously, Mr. Kersey, did you have to wait until your new girlfriend died, AGAIN!, before taking out the local kingpin?

And then there's that abortive ending. Most people hate it because the vile Colby is still breathing when the end credits roll. As for myself, though I found it a bit anti-climatic, I really didn't hate it but I wasn't really sure what they were shooting for, either. After one last heated exchange, Jesse, feeling guilty and culpable, winds up letting Johnny go. Now, there's a lot left to your own interpretations as these two oppressed men shake hands and part, and the fugitive Firecloud disappears into the mountains, but I'm fairly certain that Jesse is gonna come out of the closet and call in the Feds, and then turn evidence on Colby for all the wrong he's done. And yes, Colby is still alive, but he's been beaten and humiliated -- by an Indian! a fate worse than death to him -- his only child has left and disowned him, and his cronies are all dead, leaving him to take all the heat when the authorities come a-knocking, so his suffering is just beginning. And in the end, Johnny will probably get one more lingering death to notch on his tomahawk. Maybe. But with everything we've seen, probably not. Which leaves us with the distinct possibility that this massacre was all for nothing. So nobody wins. 

Uhm ... Yay.

Like always, Something Weird Video's DVD for Johnny Firecloud is jammed-packed with bonus material; trailers, shorts, and exploitation art is all there just waiting to be cued up. Saddled on a double-feature disc with the aptly titled Bummer! -- whose tagline screams "You don't have to assault a groupie...You just have to ask!" that's the cinematic equivalent of chewing on a piece of aluminum foil, the DVD also contains a commentary by Friedman, Mike Vraney and Frank Henenlotter for Johnny Firecloud. And thanks to the efforts of the commentators, it is filled with a lot of insider information by Friedman -- on Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S. ... E'yup, about 90% of it dealt with the German Über-[rhymes with twitch]. Informative, yes, but kinda of a wash for this particular disc. The only interesting bit about Firecloud was the revelation that in all probability -- the 20th Century Fox logo and opening fanfare instead of the Entertainment Ventures Inc. title card being the dead giveaway -- that SWV might have accidentally released the tamer, International Fox cut of the film by mistake. Several times in the commentary Friedman claims there are some skin-shots missing, and some of the violence appears to have been altered slightly or abruptly abbreviated in spots.

Whatever version, in the end, Johnny Firecloud is probably nothing you haven't seen before in a standard revenge flick. But, with all due respect to Mr. Friedman and EVI, it is a lot better than it probably should be once you consider who was behind it. Faint praise? Well, just try and sit through Bummer! and you'll see what I mean. It's rare when a feature can escape its schlocky trappings and achieve to something far beyond its limitations. Johnny Firecloud's ambitions probably weren't that high, but they were definitely met and exceeded.