Too young for the soldier

My parents were young when they had me and my sisters, and largely let us watch what we wanted on television, (although I still remember my fury when my Dad didn't let me watch any more of Beverly Hills Cop after Axel's boss let loose with a tirade of f-bombs). 

Usually this meant I was watching a lot of the A-Team and the Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider, but I also remember watching some things that I really wasn't ready for.

And not just the obvious stuff, like the time Dad let me see House by the Cemetery, because he thought the incredible gore effects were laughably over the top, and maybe they were, but the dude made out of maggots gave me the shits for years. Or the early exposure to The Omen films, which made me be very, very careful around trucks covered in sheet glass. And thin ice on a frozen lake. And elevators.

For slightly odd reasons, I was recently reminded of another film - The Soldier, from 1982. Starring the always stoic Ken Wahl with some guest craziness from Klaus Kinski, it was just another dumb action movie from the early eighties, cheap thrills that lined the shelves of the first great wave of video stores.

But I was genuinely shook up by the violence, because the way the bad guys were blasted into oblivion went heavy on the squibs.

Looking at it now, it's nothing on a proper Peckinpah, but when people are shot in The Soldier, they are really blasted, usually in excruciating slow motion. In the first couple of minutes, a random soccer mom, a construction worker and a black attorney are all machine-gunned to death, and it's genuinely shocking. 

I think they were spies or assassins or something, so probably had it coming, but it still looked like a really fucking painful way to go.

I was probably 9-years-old when I saw this and that stupid low-budget nonsense seared its way into my soul, and left me convinced that a slow-motion squib in the right place can change the world.