Non-Horror Exploitation: Thunder III (1988)

With this third movie De Angelis made an end to his somewhat disappointing Thunder trilogy. This movie also turned out to be the worst of the three.

A group of local rednecks destroy Thunder's native American village. Thunder then continues to harass the men until they pay for the damages.

Thunder III has got even less of a story than the first to movies had. The pace, like in the first two movies, is one of its main problems. Bo Svenson and Raimund Harmstorf didn't return for this third movie, so we have to do with a group of boring ass rednecks. The first two movies made up for their lack of pace by having a decent action scene or two. Unfortunately even those scenes disappoint in this movie. I don't even have to start on the bodycount.. It ain't there. That's right... No one dies in this movie! That's pretty uncommon for a movie in this genre. Therefore the poster of this movie is another prime example of Italian false advertisement. The crossbow doesn't make an appearance, the helicopters don't make a serious appearance and that huge ass machine gun certainly doesn't make an appearence. We do get a group of hillbilly's shooting around, but apart from two horses they don't hit anything. And of course there is also Thunder mainly waving around a shotgun, which he barely even uses.

The music, like in the first movie, was again provided by Francesco De Masi. Fortunately he did a better job this time. Nearing the end of the movie we get to see one decent chase scene (and even this doesn't hold up agains the scenes of the previous two movies). What I did think was weird was the fact that Thunder manages to jump over multiple vehicles with his crossbike when there's not even a ramp. Did he install some kind of Knight Rider jumping-mechanism?, did het get some help by those native American gods?, or is it just plainly bad writing?.. Probably option number three...

Thunder III turned out to be a very disappointing ending to a mediocre action trilogy. Mark Gregory doesn't have enough charisma to carry the movie and the remaining fat rednecks sure as hell don't either. Bo Svenson and Raimund Harmstorf are desperately missed in this one. The biggest problem of this movie though is the fact that the pace and even the few action scenes plainly suck. An explosion here and there to keep me from falling asleep, but it's still a bit of a snoozer.