DEADLY BREED (1989) **

A racist police captain (William Smith) and a detective named Kilpatrick (Addison Randall) lead a white supremacist group that go around killing minorities.  They kill two jailbirds who were on the straight and narrow and make it look like a drug deal gone bad.  Jake (Blake Bahner from Wizards of the Demon Sword), their parole officer, investigates the murders and uncovers the extent of the supremacists’ operation.  When Kilpatrick murders his wife, Jake goes out for revenge. 

Even though he gets top billing, William Smith mostly sits at a desk, eats Chinese food, and barks out orders.  Hell, he doesn’t even stand up until about an hour into the movie.  (He never figures out a way to get out from behind that desk though.)  So, if you’re watching Deadly Breed thinking it’s going to be a William Smit vehicle, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Deadly Breed starts out promising enough with Bahner tracking down the white supremacist cops.  If writer/director Charles T. (3 Ninjas Kick Back) Kanganis explored this aspect further, he could’ve made a real statement about racism and the police.  Instead, he drops all that about halfway through when the bad guys decide to go after Bahner.  Then, it merely becomes about his own personal survival and revenge.

I guess that would’ve been okay if the action was any damn good.  The finale is particularly weak.  Bahner just sort of sneaks into the supremacists’ compound and starts chucking dynamite around.  His final confrontation with Randall is a bit of a letdown too, and the ending with Smith is awkwardly edited.  It almost looks like they ran out of money (or time) and couldn’t film Smith’s death scene, so they just did a freeze frame of his face accompanied by the sound of a gunshot before fading to black.  Lame.

One sequence deserves special mention though.  Early on, there’s a montage of minorities being killed by the supremacists while Randall plays the organ shirtless.  The juxtaposition of murder and a beefy, sweaty guy pounding out classical music will make your jaw drop.  If only Kanganis peppered the rest of the movie with more oddball touches like this, it could’ve really been something.