Once upon a time, sunny Greece, one of the jewels of the Mediterranean, and the historical home of critical thinking, was ruled by a military junta. From 1967 to 1974, Greece was not a free country, its citizens politically isolated from the emerging European Union. That all ended when, after a number of disastrous mistakes both domestically and internationally, the Regime of the Colonels was overthrown. This left an indelible mark on Greece, and gave low rent Italian filmmaker Romano Scavolini an idea for a story.
George Ayer stars as Adam, a professional photographer from the United States, who is carrying on an affair with Irene (Mary Hronopoulou), an aging lounge singer with a tobacco-forged voice. She is the toast of the Athens social scene, taking Adam around to fetes attended by all the big luminaries. She even has him take their pictures…with her camera. Unbeknownst to Adam, he’s being used. The same roll of film with all those VIP pictures also includes photos taken at a torture session, where those same VIPs, along with some American embassy staff and CIA agents, watched while a dissident had very bad things done to him.
Soon after, when Adam is leaving Greece to return to New York, a stranger at the airport convinces him to take a roll of film to his brother in NYC. This roll of film is, of course, the film with the incriminating evidence against the junta. It’s convoluted, but most of this info isn’t revealed at the start. As first presented, this first act is a series of unconnected events that only become clear in the final act. I feel no compunction in spoiling that, as it helps this scatterbrained flick make more sense.
Back in New York, Adam makes contact with the stranger’s ‘brother,’ who asks Adam to get the film developed. Adam’s darkroom is caput at the moment, so he gives the film to a colleague. Now that the film is in the wind, things go awry. Thugs representing the junta try to track down the film, leaving corpse after corpse in their wake. No matter where Adam goes or who he sees, these bad actors know about it. Yet, despite their supernatural abilities at spycraft, they can’t find the roll of film.
What follows is a cat and mouse game through the streets of late 1970s New York, from Times Square, to the abandoned West Side Highway, to a seedy hotel in the Meatpacking District. These scenes alone make the movie an interesting time capsule of its day, as it looks like Scavolini filmed the location work guerilla style.
After Adam puts everyone he knows in mortal danger, it’s back to Greece for denouement. The roll of film makes its way into the hands of the political resistance, Adam is put into hiding, Irene makes her first appearance since the first act, and…eh, I won’t spoil the ending.
Savage Hunt is being lost to time. As of this writing, it’s not available for legitimate streaming anywhere. The print I saw was a digitized copy of a VHS tape from the UK. No one is caring for this flick. But, film history’s loss is the shitty movie fan’s gain. All that’s left for us is this remnant with a patina of age. It feels as if it would be criminal to see this movie in a proper 4K restoration.
This flick oozes cheapness. Everything feels rushed, including the story, which Scavolini wrote with Maxine Julius, alongside directing, and his cast was endearingly bad.
This was Ayer’s first movie in a career cut short by his lack of talent and his death in 1986. There’s nary a line he lets go by without giving it the full Al Pacino treatment, and his castmates respond in kind. My favorite scene of hammy dialogue comes when Adam, something of a rake, appeals to one of his old flames to hide him from the bad guys. It’s a moment of high melodrama. Adam loved her and then left her devastated. When her former lover finally returns, she says to him, “I’ve…I’ve become a hooker. Yeah, that’s right!”
Credits are pretty thin in this flick, and I have no idea who this actress was, or even the name of her character. But, wow. She matched Ayer’s gusto, and no dead read was going to mar her moment in the spotlight.
Savage Dawn is packed front to back with performances like this. It’s the greatest appeal, in fact, for we shitty movie fans. It’s not that the rest of the movie is too competent for mirthful enjoyment. It’s that it is rare to find a shitty movie where everyone, from the main character down to the extras, finds it in them to overact. So, forget the plot, forget the poor cinematography, forget the lack of attention to detail. This flick’s bona fides are all about the overwrought dialogue and the actors who spew it out. Savage Dawn takes over the #181 spot from The Amusement Park in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index.
Keep an eye out for Troma regular Jessica Dublin as the manager of the hotel.