Tag: the Assassination Game

Howdy readers. Back again. So months of being unable to find a digital or DVD copy of this film my Rotten Ramblin' On and Rotten Reelz Reviews Video Review Co-Star Shawn has been talking about. I check YouTube one last time and it is clear this translation is VHS captured. Weee!!!

Yeah this allusive mother humper has been the need to plug to reference something popular. In this case, Jeremy Renner's TAG. Yup it's just a hook. So with that being said, this is Tag: The Assassination Game.

Were you looking for Sarah Connor?

Wooo, alternative titles such as: Kiss Me, Kill Me, Tag and Everyone Gets It in the End. Well my non-existent boobies explode with delight. Shot in UCLA, because...inexpensive? I believe the storyline takes place on said campus unless this is Haddonfield Illinois that resembles California. That's a Halloween joke for those that didn't get it. Seems appropriate when the movie is directed by "The Shape" Michael Myers himself, Nick Castle (Dark Star, Halloween, Escape From New York and Halloween). Hey if you can't trust the director of The Last Starfighter and Major Payne, then the world just got a little darker.

Moving along, the campus has a more than a handful of elite assassins with dossiers of each other as in a picture and the code name they go by.

Their reigning champion of TAG has been methodical, patient and frankly has no life aside from this game. Loren (Bruce Abbot of Re-Animator, Bride of Re-Animator, Interzone, Bad Dreams and Trance) rules supreme thus far and no one has come close to defeating him. I'd point out this guy is built, handsome and fairly friendly so picking up a girl or guy wouldn't be difficult, so yeah no idea what his trip is. Maybe he is still hung up on Megan and Herbert West. Re-Animator Joke!

Hollywood mugshot!

Yeesh. A college reporter Alex Marsh (Robert Carradine of Massacre at Central High, Revenge of the Nerds, Rude Awakening, Body Bags, Escape From L.A. and Lizzie McGuire)attempting has to do a fluff piece, decides to bring this college game to light and see what is so intriguing about pretend killing people. Cue the Maze and Monsters theme music. Seriously, since I was about 13, RPGs, Comic books, Science Fiction and Sci-Fantasy took so many blows to the head. It was annoying.

Unlike those kneejerk uptights, Marsh proceeds to seek out Susan Swayze (Linda Hamilton of The Terminator, Beauty and the Beast, T2: Judgement Day, Dante's Peak, A Girl Thing, Smile, Missing in America and Terminator: Salvation) leading Alex into the world of assassins, plots, schemes and taking out their target. To appreciate the full scope of the game, the players are at the last leg of the tournament for the movie. Susan shows Alex surveillance tips, observations and real world effects the game has.

So...highway head?

As the two team-up allowing Alex to take notes, Susan and Marsh start bonding. With a dark comedy with a dash of film noir, a bit of exploitation and grim humor.

Loren trails a lower rung assassin into the shower and his pistol accidentally nails Loren. Devastated at this, he tries to call off this now happy nerd. Loren knows what he must to do, to keep his record perfect and remove the threat.

During the course of the game and over a few days, Susan and Alex find campus police and Homicide have discovered a dead body with a bullet wound in his chest.

Alex and Susan both creeped about it start thinking as this death is followed by others, more brazen than the next. It is relatively as if the killer is getting a taste for it.

Neither of our duo feel the cops can do all of the investigation on their own. With a hot scoop for Alex and a need for Susan to flex her psychology major, the pair use their collective senses and cunning to who this lunatic could be.

The only link to those murdered is the game. Can Alex and Susan survive the night? Will the cops be useful?

A bit of trivia. A LARP (Live Action Role Playing Game) named Killer by Steve Jackson is almost identical to how this game was played down to dossiers, profiles and alias. Released in 1981 a tad prior to Tag: The Assassination Game and three years later, Anthony Edwards' Gotcha with paintball guns, espionage and intrigue.

The cast of folk did make me laugh as I saw character actor Xander Berkley, TV and Film actor Kristine DeBell of Meatballs, The Big Brawl and Blood Brothers and Michael Winslow of Police Academy series. Last bit of trivia I swear. Gowdy played by Winslow has a substantial bodyguard as this is Forest Whittaker's first film appearance.

Damnest thing as good as this film was, no DVD or Blu-Ray release.   There is a Roger Corman flick of the same title in 1994 but no relation to the other. I had to watch this with a VHS conversion.    Oh yes gentle readers, I did play Killer and I played to win.

NO! I will not be in any Terminator reboots!!