Dolph Lundgren

GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY: Casino Jack and the Sting of the Red Scorpion

A look back at the controversial 1989 cult action classic, Red Scorpion

Written By: Matt Belfiore
Mondo Film and Video Guide contributor

What do you get when you take the brains at the center of one of the biggest political scandals in recent years, the veteran cameraman who lensed the adult film Deep Throat, an oppressive and racially discriminatory foreign government, the actor who killed boxer Apollo Creed, and mix them all together?  The unlikely answer is Red Scorpion, an under-rated and all but forgotten must see action film from the last days of the Cold War.

In the twenty plus years since its limited 1989 release, the film has not only become a footnote in both the history of Apartheid and the Cold War, but has also managed to gain a substantial cult following.  Featuring Dolph Lundgren in his third starring role, Red Scorpion tells the story of Lt. Nikolai Rachenko, a Soviet Spetsnaz “killing machine,” on a mission to infiltrate a band of African freedom fighters, in order to terminate their leader. After botching the assassination attempt, Nikolai is tortured by his Russian and Cuban Comrades before escaping into the desert where he is rescued and nursed back to health by a kindly bushman.

Following a time of self-discovery, he rejects his commie ideals and literally goes native, joining the African rebels in a pyrotechnic and appendage-littered finale that rivals the best of the rest of the carnage in director Joseph Zito’s canon.  So what makes this actioner worth talking about two decades after the fact?

For starters, its back-story is dripping with scandalous exploits and shady dealings that never seem to quite burn out. At the heart of it all is one the movie’s writers and producers, former American lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was the lynch-pin in corruption investigations that led to the conviction of big-wigs and corrupt lobbyists throughout Washington D.C. between 2006 and 2008.

Abramoff pled guilty to three criminal felony counts related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials, and spent almost four years in prison. He’s since been the subject of the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, and was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the more economically titled Casino Jack.  Back in the mid-eighties, years before his rise to uber-lobbyist-felon fame, Abramoff was just your average, hardworking propagandist for the government of South Africa, making his way up the ladder of infamy one scandal at a time. Abramoff, then the chairman of a group called the College Republican National Committee, visited a South Africa that was still very much under the rule of a racially discriminatory and United Nations condemned Apartheid Government. While there he made the acquaintance of a slew of sleazy characters, and was put in charge of something called the International Freedom Foundation, (IFF) an organization that was allegedly primarily focused on discrediting South African opposition leader Nelson Mandela and the entire worldwide anti-Apartheid movement.

It was during this time in Abramoff’s life that the impetus for Red Scorpion came into being. Abramoff (himself a child of Beverly Hills, where he had been raised since his family moved there from New Jersey when he was ten) conceived a story revolving around the exploits of a Russian deserter who rebels against his government. It was his intention to turn this idea into a first-rate action film to be played out on what he considered to be the overlooked stage of Africa. True to his extremist, right-wing views, he wanted his story to tell of the plight of an indigenous people’s struggle against the oppression of the encroaching Soviet empire.

And if it just so happened to extol the propaganda of another oppressive regime, well that was okay too. But making an exciting and enjoyable film, propagandist or otherwise, was apparently exactly what Jack Abramoff set out to do. With the help of his brother Robert (at the time a Warner TV executive) and with a portion of the production money allegedly from the South African government, Abramoff  secured the talents of a modest, colorful, and amazingly competent Hollywood cast and crew.  A script was produced with both Abramoff brothers receiving story credit, while screenwriter Arne Olsen – best known for penning the 1993 Burt Reynolds debacle, Cop and a Half was credited for the screenplay. Brought in to direct was veteran Joseph Zito, best known for his movies with Chuck Norris, and for directing Friday the 13th IV: The Final Chapter.

Also hired was cinematographer João Fernandes, who had received his start in movies by filming what would become some of the most groundbreaking pornography of the 1970’s, including The Devil in Miss Jones, and the iconic Deep Throat. Also having worked extensively with exploitation legend Doris Wishman, Fernandes made his way up through the B-movie ranks throughout the 70’s and 80’s, to become one of the genre’s busiest directors of photography.

In charge of explosives was John Evans, a man whose name was fairly synonymous with all things that blow up in movies of the period. Evans was responsible for some of the biggest pyrotechnics in the industry, having worked on many of the Roger-Moore-era James Bond films, as well as  Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. In the years to come, he would be in charge of special effects on mammoth blockbusters such as Tim Burton’s Batman, Steven Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Red Scorpion also boasts special make-up effects by the one and only master of horror, Tom Savini.

Cast in the lead role of Nikolai Rachenko was Dolph Lundgren, fresh from his turn as He-Man in the live-action version of Masters of the Universe. Lundgren would bring a youthful exuberance and a surprising vulnerability to the Russian that went a long way in humanizing a dehumanized product of the elite Soviet Special Forces.

Supporting Lundgren in the cast were a few impressive and established names, most notably, M. Emmet Walsh who plays Dewey Ferguson, a loose cannon, foul-mouthed, American reporter who at first abhors and eventually begrudgingly befriends Rachenko.  As the film’s stoic and unforgiving voice of America, he does an admirable job with a role that in lesser hands has the potential to become grating and one-note. Also briefly along for the fun is character actor legend, Brion James who manages to get his nose broken not once, not twice, but eventually three times by the protagonist.

While it would have made more sense fiscally to produce the picture anywhere else on earth, Abramoff and Zito made the decision to shoot entirely on location in Africa, in the small, non-South African controlled country of Swaziland. Arrangements were made, actors were flown in, and sets were built, but before production could get underway, the first of many disasters befell the project.

In the all-too-real and bloody world of 1980’s, war-ravaged Africa, the sight of a well-armed contingent, military or otherwise, was too much for the rulers of Swaziland. Fearing that the hardware being delivered to the set by the truckload might actually be intended for use in overthrowing the Swaziland government, the production had all of its permits pulled and was asked to leave the country. Abramoff claimed that the reason for the cold Swaziland feet actually had its roots in a similar situation that occurred in the 1960’s. According to him, at that time, a military operation disguising themselves as a film crew had attempted to take over the country of Algeria.  As a result of these last minute antics of the nation of Swaziland, the production was shut down before it began. Abramoff and Zito found themselves refugees. With a full cast and crew freshly transplanted to the wilds of Africa sitting on their hands waiting for the start of principle photography, costs began to skyrocket. Originally budgeted for approximately four million dollars, Red Scorpion would quickly surpass such wishful thinking. After months of re-planning, and with their cast and crew draining the their budget Abramoff and Zito finally secured the rights to shoot in another region of Africa – Namibia.

By choosing Namibia as its base of operations, a country walking lock-step with South Africa Apartheid rule, the producers placed everyone involved in the inadvertent and undesirable position of ignoring the U.N. boycott against Apartheid. Matters were made worse when it was made public that the production was allegedly using weapons and soldiers supplied directly from the racist South African government.  None of this public outcry was enough to halt the production.

All talk of ignoring boycotts, using South African weapons, and peddling pro Apartheid propaganda, was immediately rebuked as complete lies by Abramoff. He claimed that the production had rented the military hardware from a private company, and that if there was any South African equipment sprinkled in amongst the rest, it was out of his control. He also went on to deny all allegations of South African financing and the use of South African troops.

In direct contrast to Abramoff’s denials however, was the testimony of Gwen Lister, the editor of an independent weekly Nambian newspaper. According to her, in addition to using South African soldiers and equipment, the American filmmakers used the studios of an army media center and hired two active-duty South African army officers as consultants. Politics and hidden agendas were not the only problems faced while filming Red Scorpion. The project also had its share of technical woes, from the intercommunication of actors and crew members with different languages, to adapting to the harsh conditions of the surrounding terrain, to dealing with just plain bad luck.

Once shooting finally began, things got off to an ominous start when the man doubling for Lundgren was almost killed in a freak automobile accident. Apparently while driving through the precarious sand dunes of Namibia, his car overturned, leaving him with a broken neck. This in turn left the production with the not-so-envious task of finding a double in the middle of Africa for its 6’ 5”, blonde, heavily-muscled Swedish leading man.

Well known for his willingness to do his own stunts, and with his stand-in incapacitated, the task of tackling most of the dangerous action sequences fell upon Lundgren’s own massive shoulders. On more than one occasion Lundgren was either injured, including being bitten by a hyena.  It’s precisely that urgent realism that upon viewing permeates every frame of Red Scorpion.  The audience knows that there is indeed real danger at work here.  Even in the calmer moments, the viewer is well aware that this is a real place, and that at any moment something nasty could jump into frame and eat one of the actors. Watching it with jaded eyes that have been numbed by countless green-screens in the post-digital age, every sketchy explosion and recklessly red gun brings another dimension of visceral enjoyment.

Once production finally ceased, the producers found themselves over budget by somewhere between eight and ten million dollars and without a distributor for their finished product. Warner Brothers, the film’s original distributor, abruptly pulled out of the project as soon as the rumors of South African involvement began to hit the media. The studio took advantage of a contractual clause that forbid the production from involvement with South African-supported colonies.

Abramoff was ultimately able to secure a deal with Shapiro Glickenhaus Entertainment, and the film was released on a smaller scale, worldwide in January of 1989, and domestically in the U.S. in April of the same year.

Ever able to spin things his way, Abramoff, at the time said that by Warner’s pulling out, left them free to find another distributor, which in turn improved the production’s financial deal by one-hundred and twenty percent. Almost immediately, many involved with Red Scorpion began to distance themselves from the project. Costar, M. Emmet Walsh summed up his feelings on his participation: “Red Scorpion, I shot in Namibia, South West Africa. I have major reservations about it because, with hindsight, I shouldn’t have gone there. I was lied to. I said I wanted nothing to do with South Africa, and they said it was an entirely diffrent country independent of South Africa… So I get down there and here’s this movie having to do with war, guns and tanks. The money is supplied by South Africa and I’m thinking, ‘Wow!’ And then it became a very un-fun situation. “I’d worked with the director Joe Zito before, on the Chuck Norris film Missing in Action, but this time it was very difficult. They went way over budget and time. It was also very dangerous. You lose your unions over there…”

Years later, director Zito would go on record; “When I got home, I got a lot of flak and I totally agree with ‘That stupid ass Emmet Walsh’ and I shouldn’t have gone over there. I did my work – and I felt a lot of people didn’t do their work – and I came home and there’s nothing you can do. I approach these jobs (thinking) each one may be the last I’ll ever do so I do them as well as I can.”

Eventually, even Abramoff himself joined the Red Scorpion bashing act. He would come to say that he was embarrassed by the violence and profanity in the finished product. Blaming director Joseph Zito, Abramoff would go on to establish the short-lived Committee for Traditional Jewish Values in Entertainment, to fight sex and violence in film. Years later, Abramoff and his brother took on the roles of Executive Producers on the 1995 unrelated sequel, Red Scorpion 2. The ‘sequel’ is a goofy film about a team of special-ops soldiers who go out on a search for the spear that killed Jesus Christ.

The movie seems to have taken its toll on Zito as well. Once the dust cleared, he would not direct another major motion picture for eleven years, until he returned with Delta Force One: The Lost Patrol.  And what of the movie itself? The Soviet Union is gone, Apartheid has been defeated, the Cold War has ended, yet Red Scorpion remains.  Stripped of its propagandist messages, and removed from the political chicanery that hung albatross-like around every aspect of its production, it can now be watched and enjoyed for what it is: A way above average shoot-em-up, with lots of explosions, a huge body count, beautiful cinematography, and a heart of gold at its macho, take-no-prisoners center, existing purely in a blatant three act structure. It’s not your typical action film, and it’s cinema that deserves re-evaluation or a first time visit.  Due in large part to Abramoff’s rightwing, the-only-good-Commie-is-a-dead-Commie sensibilities, the film extols a Cold War, American idealism that in some instances might seem strange for a viewer who didn’t live through the era.  But for those who vividly remember a time when it wasn’t a question of “if ” they press the button, but rather “when”, Red Scorpion immediately brings the viewer back to the days when the Russians were still the bad guys.

Ultimately, one of Red Scorpion’s greatest achievements is that it displays Lundgren as being a cut above other contenders to the late 80’s action throne. Knowing the movie’s infamous history, one can’t help but imagine what may have become of Lundgren’s career had the movie been given more of a chance upon its release.  As for Jack Abramoff, he eventually served out the remainder of his prison sentence in connection with the lobbyist scandals, and ended up going to work as part of a halfway house program for Toy Pizza, a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore, Maryland, making somewhere between $7.50 and $10.00 an hour. A far cry from writing and producing one of the most luckless, infamous movies in recent history. Who knows what Abramoff is up to at this moment. Maybe if we’re all lucky, he’s hard at work on scandal number three, and in another decade or so, we’ll have one more excuse to re-visit Red Scorpion.

MONDO: So how on earth did you get involved in the project that would become the film Red Scorpion?

DOLPH: They came to me with this poster that had me on it looking a bit like Ivan Drago. I read the script, and I thought it was quite good. It was an interesting story about a Russian soldier who basically accepts a mission and then changes his mind, ‘cause he realizes that he’s not doing the right thing morally, so he’s torn between doing his duty as a soldier, and his moral duty as a human being. I liked the film’s concept very much.

MONDO: There were some scenes that were in the original script that never made the final cut of the film right?

DOLPH: Yeah, you’re right. I do remember, there was an alternate opening to the fllm. Originally, I think it opened with this sequence where my character is in Russia training in the snow. I believe that got cut due to the budget issues. Also, I believe there were some changes to the ending of the film, but at this time I can’t recall what those may have been.

MONDO: How was it working with the legendary Joseph Zito as your director?

DOLPH: Zito was great. He was a really interesting guy. Very charming, and very smart. I mean I was a kid of sorts when we shot the film. I wasn’t very film smart, but I was really into playing this character and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was still learning.  Zito was a very experienced guy and that helped a lot.

MONDO: Didn’t Zito and Abramoff function as the guys-in-charge of sorts when it came to settling all the production problems the film experienced prior to shooting?

DOLPH: As I remember it, they were. Zito in particular was in all those meetings. So I remember him functioning more as a producer on the film, than a director. He and Abramoff were kind of running the show down there for sure.

MONDO: So how much training in pre-production do you have to do in order to prepare yourself to deal with all the explosives and firearms you’re working with in the film?

DOLPH: Well you know those days were quite primitive compared to today. It was almost twenty-five years ago. It was South Africa, so a lot of the guys I was working with and training with were real soldiers. My gun instructor went off on the weekends and killed some people. You know, some actual terrorists. He came back and told us the story of how he shot some guy who was trying to blow up a pipeline. I did a lot of light firing exercises with these real South African soldiers. They were S.A.S regiments from Rhodesia. It was pretty intense.

MONDO: You did almost all your own stunts on the film as well right?

DOLPH: Jesus, I did so many crazy stunts on that film. It’s unbelievable when I think back about it. It would never happen today. Nobody would ever let you do any of that stuff now. They had scorpions crawling on me. They put these little rubbers on their stingers so they were less dangerous. I was bit by a hyena. I had to have a tetanus shot and I remember the trainer was there with a gun. The hyena wasn’t supposed to really bite me, but he kept doing it. Finally I got angry, and told the trainer that I would take his fuckin’ gun and shoot it if it bit me one more time. It didn’t. The trainer broke down into tears, I think it was his pet. I think it bit me a total of three times. The whole thing was quite hairy. I have quite a few stories like that. Putting cotton into your ears preparing for an explosion that’s coming while you’re trying to time it so you jump and somersault off of a trampoline into the air, and then fall into water. Crazy. On the first day of shooting on the film, my double broke his neck in a car accident. This type of filmmaking doesn’t happen anymore.

MONDO: One of my favorite moments in the film is probably the entire sequence in which you spend with the bushman. How was it spending time with those authentic African bush people?

DOLPH: Interesting. They spoke in a ‘click’ language. The gentlemen in the film with me, his name was Regopstaan. He was something like ninety years old. He wouldn’t do anything with me unless his entire tribe was nearby watching closely. Which made it frustrating some. Plus Zito had a translator for the tribe as well. So sometimes it would slow us down, as Zito would tell him to walk to the left, and he’d walk to the right. Interesting people though for sure.

MONDO: You’ve done a great string of amazing and underrated film’s in your career. How important do you feel  Red Scorpion  is in terms of your body of work and your legacy?

DOLPH: I think it’s important. It was a statement of the times as well. It’s almost a type of historical document of another time now. It was crazy. I was a kid, and I was on this exotic location for a long time, and it was very real. So it’s a good memory for me. It’s one of those film’s I did when I was younger and not as film smart. It’s not your typical 80′s action movie in anyway. It really holds up. It’s got great performances in it. I look back on it now, and remember everything fondly.