Animal Protector (1988)

I was aware of the existence of Swedish action movies - the various adaptations of the 'Commander Hamilton' novels being the best known - but I wasn't previously aware of the work of Mats Helge, a sort of Scandinavian Andy Sidaris, knocking out a seemingly endless stream of low-budget action films.  Animal Protector (1988), also known as Firing Squad, was often been vaunted, (not least by this trailer), as some kind of animal rights action flick, with heroic action heroes blowing things up and firing guns in defence of mistreated animals.  Sort of like a militant RSPCA.  In truth, it is not quite like that. The protagonists aren't launching armed raids on battery farms to liberate chickens, but rather it involves two separate groups attempting to storm an island where a rogue US colonel is running some kind of biological warfare lab which experiments on animals.  On the one hand, we have the 'Animal Protectors' - a trio of hot eighties chicks - going in to save the animals, on the other, we have a pair of CIA agents (one of whom is a dead ringer for a young Kurt Russel), trying to close down the operation on behalf of the US government.

David Carradine, (who appeared in a number of Mats Helge movies), headlines an otherwise Swedish cast, playing the villainous Colonel Whitlock.  It is all in English and while some of the local cast are dubbed with American or British accents, others deliver their lines in Swedish accented English - which seems odd as most of them are apparently playing US soldiers.  It i sall as frenetic and messy as you'd expect, with highly variable performances, poorly written dialogue and a thumping and very loud music soundtrack.  Despite the somewhat scuzzy look and sometimes tinny sound, it is actually quite competently made by the standards of low budget actioners.  There's plenty of action, including a lot of hand-to-hand combat, with Carradine involved in a lot of it.  Compared to some of the stuff that Carradine was involved in at this point in his career, Animal Protector is quite decent.  If you like frantic, more than slightly barmy, low budget action, then you could do a lot worse than to look up Animal Protector - it's a lot more fun than many of the US equivalents that it seeks to imitate.