Rolling Vengeance

What do you do when your family’s been senselessly killed by a clan of drunken goons who get off scot-free?

If you’re a young trucker named Joey, you take matters into your own hands. You build the ultimate monster truck.

So where to do I start with Rolling Vengeance? How about the beginning?

Millennials who grew up in Iowa City will remember Hagen’s. Located on South Gilbert Street, Hagen’s was the video rental store in IC. Though Hy-Vee and Drug Town both offered video rentals, Hagen’s was where everyone rented movies. Offering over 24,000 titles, it was the John’s Grocery of video rentals. It also had a huge selection of video games and a side room packed floor to ceiling with porn. (If you did not pay attention, it was easy to turn the corner in the horror section and — WHOA!) Hagen’s was badass, but, like all good things, it did not last; it closed sometime in the late-nineties. (The building is now a Rent-A-Center, and I am willing to bet the inside still smells the same way. Hagen’s always had a very unique smell.)

When I as a kid, Saturday visits to Hagen’s were a family ritual. Sometimes all four of us went, but usually it was just my dad and I. I browsed the games and the far shelves where the obscure movies were kept as he checked the new releases. Dad rented James Bond flicks and anything with trucks and chases for me, including Rolling Vengeance, a movie about a young trucker who uses a custom-built monster truck to avenge the murder of his family. It was a favorite of mine and dad rented it many times, totally oblivious of its R rating.

I was totally oblivious of it, too. Sure there was tons of swearing and a bit of nudity, but I didn’t give a shit. All I cared about was the fire-belching monster truck and the vengeance it unleashed; everything else was tedious and boring.

We rented Rolling Vengeance for what I remember as years — I was probably five, six, and seven — until one night when I showed it to friends. One of them went upstairs and told his mom I was watching a movie with naked women in it. After that my parents banned the rental of Rolling Vengeance until I was older. I was crushed. Walking through Hagen’s a few weeks later, my dad told me, “You can’t rent that again until you’re nine.” (Yeah — nine! My dad could no doubt teach Tipper Gore a thing or two about parenting.) When I turned nine, mom pushed the age back even more. By the time I was old enough to finally rent Rolling Vengeance again, Hagen’s had closed and the movie was not available at any other store in town.

Years passed and I forgot the title, but the movie and its eighties B-movie glory stayed with me. Thanks to Google, I rediscovered the name a few years back and bought a used copy of the VHS through Amazon last year. However, I did not watch it until the night before the Oscars in February.

I cracked open a PBR, popped the tape into our small TV-VCR combo unit, and watched Rolling Vengeance for the first time in over 20 years. The New York Daily-News blurb on the back of the cover probably says it best: “…the definitive monster-truck movie.” The review snippet from Vanity on the front — “Compelling…echoes of ROCKY and DEATH WISH” — is way out in left field. Only a stoner could write something that far out of touch.

The beginning is, as I remember it, tedious. Very slowly the plot builds and all the pertinent events unfold. Ned Beatty, who sports a heinously bad haircut, operates a strip joint in what appears to be an Ohio farming community. (The movie was filmed entirely in Toronto.) His hick sons, all from different mothers, terrorize and kill the main character’s mother and sisters. They are acquitted in court, then kill Joey’s father. In turn, Joey decides to convert the monster truck he happened to be building for a competition into a killing machine. That’s when the movie really gets rolling, literally.

Though a cult classic and good movie for a playful Saturday night — the eighties cheesiness starts oozing from the VCR during the opening credits — Rolling Vengeance is pretty bad. The only thing going for it is its uniqueness. Besides a rather decent performance by Beatty (and his awful hair), the only other redeeming value is the monster truck and the way it portrays the countryside at night. I have never seen a movie that captures the eerie darkness and spookiness of rural roads so well. It reminded me of nighttime trips back to Iowa City from a friend’s farm near Columbus Junction. As for the nudity: I have never seen uglier boobs. They were awful. (Thank God dad rented The Spy Who Loved Me. Barbara Bach was probably the first woman I ever fell in love with.) And the ending is way too convenient.

But what can I say? I loved it. Rolling Vengeance gave me a big, nostalgic boner. I finally got to reconnect with a long lost piece of my life and I will cherish it forever, regardless of how cheesy it is.