Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988)

This is the closest thing to an English-language trailer I could find for Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988), a typically genre-bending Italian action movie.  While the title indicates an Indiana Jones knock off, the film's makers take the supernatural elements from that series of films an excuse to work in cannibalistic zombie monks.  Borrowing its jungle setting from the Italian zombie/cannibal genres, Raiders also works in many of the tropes of the cannibal movies in the form of all those crude but deadly (not to mention messy) traps set by the natives.  On top of that, the whole thing also has something of a Rambo vibe, with its heavily armed US heroes returning to the Vietnam jungle.  Many of the action scenes - guys blasting away with big guns, mowing down enemy soldiers by the dozen - are highly reminiscent of those Wild Geese-inspired mercenary action movies the Italians cranked out (usually starring Lewis Collins).  So, just your average Italian schlock movie.

The plot involves a pair of Vietnam vet mercenaries being employed by a mysterious old Vietnamese guy, to go into the jungle and retrieve the title artifact - an ivory tablet possessed of magic powers.  Among the perils they face are hostile local military forces and the aforementioned monks, who worship the tablet which, in return, has granted them immortality at the price of turning them into the flesh hungry living dead.  In seizing the tablet, they also rescue a young woman from being sacrificed by the monks.  As they try to escape the jungle, double crosses occur, the old dude is revealed as a villain hell bent on world domination, the rescued girl as a priestess and guardian of the tablet and lots of lead flies around.  To be honest, it really is crap, with poor production values and gimcrack special effects.  But it lasts less than ninety minutes, moves along very briskly, includes lots of action and is mindlessly entertaining.  Best of all, it stars Jim Mitchum, Robert Mitchum's look and sound alike son.  Sporting a magnificent 'tache, he does his old man proud, appearing to sleep through large swathes of the movie.  It's a performance so laid back that he's virtually horizontal.  He really is quite fascinating to watch - at last we know what it would have looked like if Robert Mitchum had gone to Italy during the late seventies' doldrums of his career and made cheapjack direct-to-video movies.

I surprised myself by enjoying this one so much when I recently caught it on B Movie TV (available on all good Roku devices).  Like I said, it's crap, but doesn't really have pretensions of being anything else.  If nothing else, its makers should be applauded for combining so many genres into a single movie running only eighty four minutes.