FORGOTTEN FILM: ROOSTER - SPURS OF DEATH (1983)

NOTE: I should say before this review that the Moviezzz Blog does not endorse or support the sport of cockfighting. It is wrong and not to mention illegal.

Believe it or not, there is a film that was released by the name of ROOSTER: SPURS OF DEATH. I swear, I am not making this up.

The film is a rather straightforward account of a group of “cockers” or, cockfighters in Kansas.

The film opens with a private landstrip while the theme song played (yes, there is a theme song). In order for us to hear the entire song, we watch the long and slow taxiing of the plane into the hanger, where some wealthy cockfighting fans have arrived for the big fight that night.

Vince Van Patten (son of Dick, and at one time married to What Ever Happened to subject Betsy Russell) plays the son of a fighter, who is entering his first chicken in the battle. He and his mute friend train the chicken before heading off to the fight.

Along the way they stop off at a whorehouse where Vince falls for Kristine DeBell, who wants to head to Mexico. He tells her about the fight that night and asks her to join him.

There is also a sidestory about the family hosting the fight. There are long speeches about the history of cockfighting, how Julius Caesar, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were involved in it. The film was obviously trying to promote the sport.

I guess you can say there are attempts at comic relief as there is a dwarf in the cast named “Chicken”. He is subjected to such lines of dialogue as “I suppose being a dwarf has its mysteries” and “I’m going to stretch you out to normal size!”

The final half hour of the film is made up of the big fight. Much of this is shown in slow motion. I found this hard to watch, but at the end of the film there was a notice saying that all the fighting in the film was staged and the chickens weren’t hurt. I was kind of surprised to read that, as I expected the opposite.

MANOS: HANDS OF FATE is often regarded as one of the worst films of all time. I never thought that was fair as the film was clearly shot by people who didn’t know what they were doing and the film never really had much of a release.

I feel the same way about ROOSTER. It isn’t really a film. No one involved really knew what they were doing.

The director of the film however is a man by the name of Brice Mack. In looking over his credits all I have to say is wow!

Brice was a background artist for Disney, working on everything from FANTASIA, SONG OF THE SOUTH, CINDERELLA, pretty much everything up until THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW in 1958. He also wrote several cartoons, including those for Donald Duck and Goofy. In the 70’s he got into directing, mainly low budget films like this that never saw much, if any, release.

The IMDB lists a 1983 release date for ROOSTER. However the film has a copyright of 1977. It was probably made, realized that it wasn’t releasable and put on a shelf until 1983 when Kristine DeBell had some controversy, and it was then finally released.

The VHS I saw was from EDDE Entertainment, a notoriously low budget video operation from the early 90’s (the tape was released in 1990). If you remember the low budget tapes, selling for $10, found on department and drug store shelves of the 90’s, many of those were probably from EDDE.

Some of the reviews on the IMDB make me question if there is another version of the film out there. One review states that the chickens in the fight scenes talk, and there are fantasy sequences. That wasn’t in the version I saw. In fact, there was little attempt at humor in the film, so unless someone else took over and re-edited the film, I doubt that version exists. It is probably “phantom memory”.