#4life.

Payback IOU Death (1990)

Not to be mistaken with Payback from 1991 starring Don Swayze that imdb seems to mix the pictures up on and on youtube someone says this Roger Rodd Payback is the Don Swayze one.. so anyways , don’t mix them up... even that they are both extremely cheesy mullet style action flicks. 

Payback IOU Death is something on the level of extreme cheese and near homemade action movies that borders on the line of movies like Deadly Prey or maybe Samurai Cop not only for the mullets but the obnoxious characters and low budget violence.

Produced by Joseph Merhi who would later form the infamous PM entertainment action film company. This would be PM entertainments practice run of over testosterone unrealistic action movies. (cause it definitely was not a professional production).  Payback is so bad it was not a PM entertainment film and in fact after being lost for awhile would be released by Troma.

It stars comedian and social bully Roger Rodd who is neither funny nor an action hero. Most images of the movie should the much bigger and even more mullet styled Deron Mcbee (who was American Gladiators Malibu)  who plays one of the evil henchmen in the movie and just happens to look like an actor hero then the films real star.  Roger Rodd plays mercenary for hire Joe Shepard and it was his real name that made me laugh so hard I had to watch the movie. That and I am always up for a cheese macho low budget action flick.. but wow this was a shockingly stinky one.

The basic plot of a senator is being kidnapped by terrorists and his daughter must convince a retired mercenary to come back to the job and save her father.

The mercenary is Joe Shepard played by Roger Rodd. It takes a long time to meet this character and it was because of his name on the cover that I even watched the movie. You already see several jacked guys with mullets before meeting the so called hero. In fact the opening scene shows a jacked 80s wrestler looking dude wearing the most uncomfortable looking pink mankini. Eventually we meet the hero and he is drunk at a bar. Everyone in the scene seems drunk. Either they are secretly good actors for only one scene or they in fact were all just drunk. For the rest of the film Roger Rodd (it's just funny to say his name) seems to continue being drunk so again I am going with the idea that maybe the cast was just paid in booze. 

Everyone in the film is trying to talk like an action movie but no real dialogue was written for it. So it's the worse, cheesy mumbling you have ever heard. Roger Rodd seems to say the words “Fuck it” all the time that you would joke it was his catchphrase until much later in the movie you realise it is his catchphrase and the movie expected it to catch on.  

After many scenes of Roger Rodd proving that he is neither an action hero nor a decent actor it finally turns into an action movie when the mercenary teams up with the senators bodyguard and they raid the bad guys base. So many explosions with soldier jump from mini trampolines before the explosions even go off. The only memorable scenes involve Deron Mcbee when he first shows up do to an assassination and leaves a audio tape on the dead body with a message for the victims family.  Deron looks like an giant 80s hair metal singer so at first it looked like he was giving the dead body his latest demo tape. Later Deron would face the hero in a fairly hilarious torture scene. 

Sure the movie is filled with military cover ups, rapey terrorists, secret double crossing super agents... but all so bumbling in the execution that I hope you can at least laugh at it. Cause as unbelievable as it will seem this movie was not meant to make you laugh. 

My go to bad movie watching buddy Bob and I watched the movie on knowing nothing about it and got way too much of a laugh about it.

Bad acting from actors that seem like they would be so egotistical that they were sure they were the best actors you ever saw. Poorly filmed and poorly executed. However Bob and I would keep quoting lines from the movie, that out of context make no sense to even quote now. I am sure we will keep quoting the movie and referencing the scenes we totally misunderstood, so much so that people will want to see the movie just because of us. However let this be our official statement from both Bob and I... this movie stinks.. its bad. A small set of “bad movie” memorable scenes worth mocking and thats pretty much it (but wow are they impressively stinky scenes).  Like in the beginning a blonde woman in a bikini gets into a helicopter and puts her clothes back on which made us question if the movie was maybe in reverse.  So no this movie is not actually worth it until you are drinking , eating pizza and willing to bash this movie with your buds.  It borders on Samurai cop but feels like it should know better. 

Lots of people being shot the in forehead lots of cocaine era filmmaking and over acting and a boob here and there for good luck.  Well shit , when I say that it doesn’t sound that bad....