Blu-ray Review: The Mad Bomber [Severin] | Under the Radar Magazine Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
Wednesday, November 13th, 2024  

The Mad Bomber

Studio: Severin Films

Oct 30, 2024 Web Exclusive

A series of deadly explosions has the LAPD in a panic. The fantastically-named Detective Geronimo (Vince Edwards) has become obsessed with the case, making it his personal duty to bring the mysterious killer—known to the public as “The Mad Bomber”—to justice. His targets seem random: a high school campus, a hospital, a hotel. His manifestos, recorded on cassette tape and mailed to newspapers and police stations, leave no clues to his identity. Geronimo’s only lead is a potential eye witness who was in the act of committing an unrelated crime in close proximity to where the Mad Bomber was planting one of his explosives; if the detective can find him, it could be their best hope of identifying the bomber.

Bert I. Gordon’s The Mad Bomber (1973) is a sleazy little police thriller which cheaply followed in the wake of films like Dirty Harry and The French Connection. (One alternate title—used on the print sourced for this Blu-ray release—was the adorably shameless “The Police Connection.”) One has to wonder if the genre’s cliches were fully codified by the point this film was made, but they’re on display to an almost hilarious degree here: Geronimo’s your obligatory loose cannon who beefs with his chief, doesn’t play by the rules, and isn’t afraid to bloody his knuckles if it’ll get a suspect to cough up a clue. He’s got an ex-wife, an estranged kid, and an apparent death wish. One of his colleagues dryly comments that if Geronimo weren’t a cop, he’d probably have to arrest him.

The Mad Bomber’s identity is only a mystery to the characters in the film, as the movie follows the action from both sides. Played by TV Western fixture Chuck Connors, the bomber is a short-fused twerp who takes out his anger on just about anyone who crosses his path. When he’s not duct-taping dynamite to alarm clocks, he’s chewing out bad drivers, litterbugs, and even the poor girl who rings up the wrong price for his beans in the supermarket checkout line. He’s an all-around nasty chud and, sure, he’s got a sad backstory, but this isn’t the sort of movie where we want to see the villain rehabilitated—we want to see him violently and irreversibly punished by our lawless law enforcement officer.

The Mad Bomber leans pretty heavy on forensic technologies that must have been pretty new or exciting at the time. The movie takes special care to show off a room-sized criminal database computer that prints out surprisingly accurate psychological profiles of criminals, and dedicates a very long scene to a character putting together a composite sketch of the baddie using a slide projector. (You’ll smile when the slides switch from generic pencil drawings to an exact photo of Chuck Connors and the witness points and shouts, “That’s him!”)

The theatrical cut of The Mad Bomber doesn’t hold back in the sleaze department. When Geronimo interviews a victim in a strip club, it’s framed so that the conversation takes place with full frontal nudity viewable over his shoulder. When a bomb goes off, it’s obviously going to blast the buttons off the victim’s blouse. One character hangs out in a mancave that’s literally wallpapered with nude blow-ups of his wife. The movie’s most memorable kill comes when a bad guy explodes—read that in multiple ways—while watching a porno movie. The sheer amount of nudity in The Mad Bomber makes the existence of a TV cut (also present on this release) all the more hilarious, but it’s an interesting curiosity given that it includes alternate footage where actors re-filmed scenes with their clothes on, or with different decor in the backgrounds.

Severin’s release of The Mad Bomber comes packed with many other fantastic bonus features, chief among them a commentary from Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women), who spends the first chunk of the film providing helpful background on the careers of Gordon and some of his Bomber collaborators before bringing on retired bomb squad detective Mike Digby to supply a real-world take on the proceedings. There’s also a long archival interview with Bert I. Gordon (who passed away last year) by David Del Valle, an interview with the director’s daughter and actress Cynthia MacAdams, a then-and-now look at the film’s Los Angeles locations, and a booklet essay by Andy Turner.

The Mad Bomber might be too silly for some, too scuzzy for others, and is pretty hostile towards its female characters (even for the genre and the era), but the more-than-game cast and crew found ways to keep it entertaining. Although the film itself won’t be for everyone, the plentiful context added via the disc’s bonus materials add a lot of value to the package as a whole.

(severinfilms.com/products/the-mad-bomber-blu-ray-booklet-w-exclusive-slipcover)




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