Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1983
Running Time	102:31
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (58:50)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Steve Carver
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	Chuck Norris David Carradine Barbara Carrera Leon Isaac Kennedy Robert Beltran L.Q. Jones Dana Kimmell R.G. Armstrong Jorge Cervera Jr. Sharon Farrell Daniel Frishman William Sanderson John Anderson
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Francesco De Masi

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.00:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired French Italian Spanish Dutch Portuguese Polish Greek	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Want to see a classy action flick from the 80s? Grab yourself a copy of Die Hard.

    Want to see a campy action flick dripping with one-liners, bad machismo, terrible 80s fashion and the Missing In Action man himself Chuck Norris strutting in a pair of tight jeans? Then Lone Wolf McQuade is the film for you!

    Rumoured to be the plot basis for Norris’s ongoing and highly successful Walker: Texas Ranger series, the plot of Lone Wolf McQuade finds our reticent hero in a quiet, out of the way town down in good ole Texas breaking up gangs of horse rustlers and generally kicking ass down South – pun intended. Helping McQuade are his obligatory sidekicks, state trooper Kayo (Robert Beltran, later to become Commander Chakottay off Star Trek: Voyager), Colonel Sanders look-a-like and retired Texas Ranger Dakota (L.Q. Jones), and token black FBI agent Jackson (Leon Isaac Kennedy).

    Into McQuade’s little arse-end corner of nowhere comes a big bad gun runner, murderer, and all round bad guy (David Carradine) with a penchant for really bad sweaters and set on stealing some weapons from the army and generally doing nasty things. Helping him out is the usual assortment of bad guy extras looking like they fell out of a dilapidated Spaghetti Western and, of all things, a dwarf on an electric wheelchair named Falcon (Daniel Frishman, who made his mark in cinema playing an Ewok). Exactly why these two are paired up is never really explained, but it’s one of those things you just have to run with.

    Well, the inevitable happens, with Chuck vowing to clear the rabble out of town or kill them trying, and Carradine vowing to kill McQuade or run out of town. There are the usual sprawling fist-fights and shoot outs and it seems that McQuade can’t walk into a room without starting a fight or getting shot at. Then Carradine ups the ante by kidnapping McQuade’s daughter, which only makes things more personal and sets the scene for a showdown to the finish between the two head honchos down in good old Mexico. This gives Chuck the chance to keep his mouth shut and kick some ass, although he must be uncomfortable in those jeans doing head kicks. I can feel the circulation cutting off just looking at him.

    This is no Invasion U.S.A., but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. While that film abandoned all plot devices in favour of just blowing s*** up, it’s like Norris is actually trying in this one, and you've got to give him some kudos for knuckling down (again, pun intended) and just getting the job done, even if at times that job is painfully laughable. Ah, yes, it gives me a nostalgic twinkle in the eye. I can remember all these Chuck Norris intentionally B-grade action flicks from when I was a kid, renting them after school from the guy at the video store who didn’t care if you were nine or nineteen, and devouring them with my friends over a couple of bags of potato chips. Those were the days.

    In an era when so many action flicks rely on CGI graphics and plots even more ludicrous than this one, I just wish they had the technology and filming techniques back then to get some of these simpler stories told a little better. Maybe some better writers and a better director too. While this is seriously B-grade, and bordering on C- or even D-grade, that’s what it’s meant to be, aimed squarely at the rifle-toting, pick-up truck driving, redneck yokel crowd. So grab a few beers and quit your whining – it’s time to see Walker, err, I mean McQuade sink a boot in for Texas!

Video

    Presented in 2.00:1, 16x9 enhanced, this has been reformatted from the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, although I am not sure exactly why. I do not think that it makes a huge difference on this one.

    The transfer is very grainy, which creates some nasty MPEG artefacts on the rocky scenery of outback Texas. The opening showdown between McQuade and the horse rustlers is marred by these distracting artefacts (not that the scene could be any more marred than it already is by the guns that just don’t run out of bullets and the bad guys that miss at point blank range, but anyway, moving right along...).

    Colour is a little faded, although Texas is pretty sun-drenched and devoid of colour a lot of the time. Skin tones were fairly on the money, but this has the look and colour palette of a 70s TV show as opposed to a big screen movie.

    Shadow detail is pretty murky and grainy and this results in some background dot crawl which can be a little distracting.

    The transfer has no other major MPEG artefacts, and suffers only from a little low-level noise resulting from the graininess and some minor aliasing and moire.

    For a print this old, the transfer is fairly clean in terms of film artefacts, with only the odd dot here and there. The worst of it was a big hair across the screen at 77:55.

    Subtitles are available in nine languages. They are white with a black border.

    The dual layer pause is at 58:50. It occurs during a scene change and is not very noticeable.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Well, we’ve got a number of audio tracks, all in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. We have English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

    With the original English track, there are no glaring audio sync issues, but the dialogue is not always clear and easy to hear. While this is of itself not fabulous, considering Chuck doesn’t say much in this one, who really cares?

    The mono track is, funnily enough, monaural. It’s also a little flat. There are no directional cues, but at least, the 2.0 Mono is well balanced.

    The music is laughable, but that’s part of this film’s charm.

    This could have used some subwoofer use to highlight various kicks and punches. But, beggars can't be choosers ...

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are 16x9 enhanced and silent.

Theatrical Trailer (2:12)

    Presented in the original aspect ration of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Mono, this one gives away the entire plotline (what little there is) so do yourself a favour and don’t watch it before you watch the movie.

    As far as I can tell, the R1 version is largely identical barring the NTSC/PAL format difference, the region coding, and the language options. Choose with your language barrier or your wallet.

    Lone Wolf McQuade is a really B-grade action flick from the 80s. It’s pretty camp by comparison to modern cinema, and the fashion is really bad. But you will laugh and laugh and hopefully not choke on your rum and coke. Definitely a redneck’s fantasy.

    The video is okay, but marred by some nasty graininess.

    The 2.0 Dolby Mono track does the job but is pretty unexceptional.

    The extras include a lonely and pretty shocking trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall