Bullies

Rural romance/crime drama morphs into an absurd Rambo-like revenge flick

A mother, son and new stepdad move from the big city to a rural area in the shadow of the Rockies in the Great Northwest (Janet-Laine Green, Jonathan Crombie and Stephen Hunter). The teen meets an intriguing lass (Olivia d'Abo), but she’s a member of a hostile moonshining family that grossly bullies the citizenry of the area. Dehl Berti is on hand as an American Indian who befriends the kid.

"Bullies" (1986) is curiously listed as a horror flick in some sources, but it’s not; it’s a hillbilly romance mixed with crime drama/thriller. The confusion is likely due to it being directed by Paul Lynch, known for “Prom Night” (1980) and “Humongous” (1982), plus the fact that there is some shocking gore for back then in the last half-hour. The movie is actually a meshing of the basic plot of “The Karate Kid” (1984) with the setting of “I Walk the Line” (1970) and “First Blood” (1982), along with the one-man-army element of the latter.

The first two acts are a really good set-up despite the overdone villainy of the antagonists (I mean these guys are just frothing at the mouth with ee-vil). It smacks of a real-life situation and you care about the protagonists while loathing the arrogant intimidators. At around the hour-mark, however, there’s some awkward editing and the story switches to an over-the-top action flick while inexplicably forsaking a key character. It’s as if the writers never heard the proverb “Less is more.”

Still, if you can roll with these issues there’s enough good here to make “Bullies” worthwhile for those interested. For instance, the relationship of the boy and Will Crow, some quality life-lessons, the teen romance and Olivia d'Abo’s fun swimming scene.

The film runs about 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Marysville & Kimberly, British Columbia, which are located an eight-hour drive east of Vancouver in the Canadian Rockies of southeast BC, as well as Thunder Hill Provincial Park 40 miles north of there.

GRADE: B-