Red Scorpion was released in 1989 and starred Swedish-born Dolph Lundgren as a Spetsnaz soldier, Lt. Nikolai Rachenko. He is ordered to find and kill Sundata, a leader who is keeping hope alive in Africa while the Russians and Cubans continue to purge, village by village. Taking out Sundata would be a crippling blow to the resistance, but ultimately Rachenko’s assassination attempt fails. When he returns to his commander, he is betrayed and tortured. This awakens Rachenko’s conscious and the one man killing machine decides to turn on his own nation to stop the injustices they are committing.
Lundgren is in top form with a supporting cast that includes M. Emmet Walsh, Al White, and Carmen Argenziano. Action abounds, but there is also a lot of quality character development for Lundgren. The pacing of Red Scorpion is excellent, never straying too far from high intensity action but also slowing for quality developments. The action is on par with Schwarzenegger’s Commando; and as with Commando, the replay value is very high. This is just one of those classic 80s/90s films that continues to stand the test of time and be one of those rarer movies that I can stand to watch a few times a year. Red Scorpion set out to be a quality action title and it fully reached that goal.
Synapse has done an excellent job bringing Red Scorpion to Blu-ray. The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack includes a new 2K HD restoration of the uncensored cut. Image quality is mostly superb throughout, except for some color banding in the darker scenes. These are noticeable, but not too distracting, especially when moments later the view shifts to outdoor daylight, where most of the movie takes place. The views here — thanks to the African mountains and sands — are really pretty, and the clarity provided on this disc is quite good. Clearly some effort was put into this restoration as when you take the transfer at it’s best, it can stand its own against much more modern HD movies. That Synapse took this effort rather than simple throw the film on BD and call it a day (as some other 80s/90s action movies have been treated) is something fans will appreciate and it makes a big difference in the quality of this release. The 5.1 Surround, with English subs, compliments the video nicely.
We’ve all seen a lot of releases of older B or niche movies that would stop here — maybe throw in a trailer or some art, but no more. Fortunately, you get a lot more with Red Scorpion. The extra features include:
-Audio Commentary with Director Joseph Zito and Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson.
-Hath No Fury: Dolph Lundgren And The Road To Red Scorpion (25m, HD) – A very recent interview with Dolph where he talks about his life starting when he was a Swedish engineering student. Almost overnight, he was starring in Rocky IV and things just snowballed from there. It’s a very candid and interesting interview.
-Assignment: Africa (13m, HD) – Producer Jack Abramoff reminisces about the project.
-Scorpion Tales (10m, HD) – Another good interview, this time with make-up effects artist Tom Savini. The background to this interview is really cool, there are a bunch of busts of various ghouls and zombies and things. Anyway, Tom talks about his memories of Red Scorpion, including what went into making the dismembered arm of Argenziano’s character at the end of the film. Some vintage behind the scenes stills and footage is shown, too.
-Rare Original On-Set Behind the Scenes Footage (9m) – This is a bit of raw production footage from filming.
-Animated Still Gallery (7m) – A series of stills, mostly of movie posters from around the world.
-Linear Notes on the Making of Red Scorpion by Jeremie Damoiseau – A booklet within the case contains a well written article about the making of Red Scorpion.
-Trailer (2m)
-TV Spots (3m)
-Reversible Cover – A neat feature that I would like to see more often; you can literally flip the box or cover art of this release to show an alternate design.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
