Exploder (1992)

Tagline: Meet Jack Splinter. Now meet his little friend: THE EXPLODER!

Ex-navy seal Jack Splinter, sickened by the folly of war, abandoned the military to pursue a life of calm and meditation in the Alaskan wilderness. Together with Dickhead, his five hundred pound grizzly bear companion, Splinter survived off the land.

Then they came…

Major Flaggat – Splinter’s old Commander – tracks our hero down, and sitting in his spacious log cabin, offers Splinter one last job.

It sounded simple enough; train some recruits, take them on a secret mission to North Korea and leave them to their own devices.

“You’ll be home in three days,” Flaggat had said.

Now everybody’s dead and Splinter is running for his life.

What was the secret mission? Why did they lie to him?

The hunter becomes the hunted after Splinter retrieves the weapon he swore he would never touch again. He’s out for answers, and if he can’t get them? Revenge!
***

Through the beauties of entertainment I decided to tell a story about a ravaged war veteran, used and betrayed by the very institution he had given his life to. My choice to include the experimental localised vacuum depressurisation cannon – Exploder - was chiefly to illustrate the true horror of war. The initial draft of the film had our hero toting a standard M-16 automatic rifle, I decided that this lacked the desired impact and decided to go for the more visceral Exploder.

The results?

Over twelve minutes of footage had to be cut from the reel by the ESRB, rendering the climax - a gruesome confrontation on the stage of the Sydney opera house - both confusing and incoherent.

The actor who played splinter (A certain high kicking gentleman from Brussels) went on to accredit his failed marriage and repeated drug problems to the physiological stress accrued from staring in this feature.

I am currently in the process of trying to get Exploder (in its whole, splattering entirety) a long deserved DVD release.

Watch this space…