River of Death is a movie Cannon films picked up in the very late ‘80s, when they were kind of on their last legs, and trying to get by through doing the things that made them successful – capitalizing on other studios successes with low budget films (or optioning films at low cost) that had a similar vibe to them as other successes. In this case, going off of the success of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, by optioning a movie that was already under production that had a similar adventure theme. Instead of returning to the Allan Quatermain well that they’d visited twice before, this time they went with a jungle adventure film based on a novel by Alastair MacLean, the author of Guns of Navarone.

The film stars long-time Cannon Films staple Michael Dudikoff as John Hamilton, a river guide who is introduced guiding a doctor and his daughter up a tributary of the Amazon in order to find the source of a mysterious disease that is killing members of numerous indigenous tribes. However, things go poorly when the trio are attacked by members of another tribe… and a white man in a military uniform and World War II German weapons, causing the doctor to be killed and his daughter to be captured.

In order to rescue the daughter, Hamilton tries to throw an expedition together, meeting seemingly no success until he encounters a rich business tycoon (Donald Pleasence), who will bankroll the expedition, provided he and some of his staff are able to come along. Also coming along are a pair of Nazi-hunters going on the down-low, as they suspect that there are some Nazis operating out of their destination.

So, River of Death almost has the full Cannon films experience. It doesn’t have the extremely gratuitous nudity, but it does have the violence and racism. The film was shot in South Africa during the anti-Apartheid boycott, rather than in Brazil, so what we end up with for people in the film who are supposed to be indigenous to the Amazon watershed are Black South African extras in heavy body paint, or White South African extras in heavy body paint and/or some dirt smudged on them, with only the White actors getting significant speaking lines, while any topless shots go to the Black actresses, but nothing nearly as purient in its intent as the nude scenes in Ninja: The Domination. It’s not great.

The acting performances are fine – Donald Pleasence is closer to Jeremy Irons than to Christopher Lee, in that Pleasence is an actor where you can kind of tell when he doesn’t care about what he’s doing in a scene. He’ll show up and do the job once the check cleared, but you can sometimes kind of tell when he’s not into the scene – but that level of enthusiasm will vary considerably dependent on the scene.

There are parts of of the movie where Pleasence really digs what he gets to do, particularly when his character gets to reveal his true colors, but there are more than a few occasions where his performance is appropriate for the scene, but also feels somewhat minimal. There are scenes where his character is being shot at and he’s ducking for cover, but he neither shows a familiarity with the situation that would bely the truth of his character – that he’s a Nazi officer, seeking revenge on another Nazi officer who betrayed him back in Germany – nor a lack of familiarity (or something giving the impression of a lack of familiarity) that would reflect a rich tycoon.

Much of Hamilton’s characterization is done through voiceover narration, and Dudikoff’s performance for those line reads has the same sleepy lack of interest in the material that Harrison Ford’s narration from Blade Runner had. That didn’t work in Blade Runner’s favor, and it didn’t work in this movie either. Dudikoff’s on-camera performance is otherwise fine, including (presumably) any ADR, so this feels like a (bad) directorial decision.

In all, it’s a very mediocre movie. I watched this on Tubi, and considering Tubi has become the equivalent to “The stuff you’d watch on Cable when there was nothing else on” from back in the day, this kind of fits. The movie is an enjoyable 2 hours, and that’s fine.

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