Movie Review: Red Flag Down (Blu-ray) 1992

BLU-RAY ANNOUNCEMENT: RED FLAG DOWN (1992) by Matt Boiselle

 Every once in a while, a movie comes along that makes you say, “How the hell have I never heard of this before?” Red Flag Down is one of those movies.

Originally released in 1992 as a shot-on-video regional action/comedy, this thing has been hiding in the shadows for over 30 years. Now Blood Sick Productions, in collaboration with Lunchmeat, has finally given it its first-ever disc release, and you can pick it up through MVDShop.com. The premise is pretty damn great. A couple of eccentric paintball park owners invite a young reporter out to check out their fancy new facility. The problem? One of the teams has been given real ammunition instead of paintballs. Yeah. That goes about as well as you’d expect. Before long, people are actually getting murdered, friends are shooting friends, and the survivors discover that getting out of the game isn’t going to be quite as easy as they thought. And this is where Red Flag Down becomes a pretty damn fun little SOV curiosity.

 I’m not going to sit here and tell you this is some undiscovered masterpiece. It isn’t. The acting can be rough, the production is extremely low-budget, and there are definitely moments where you can feel every bit of that 1992 regional filmmaking budget. But honestly? That’s part of the fun. There’s something incredibly charming about these old shot-on-video movies where a group of people basically said, “Let’s make a movie,” grabbed a camera, found some locations, rounded up their friends, and just went for it. Red Flag Down has plenty of goofy characters, ridiculous situations, a surprisingly high body count and lots of blood splattering all over the place. The squibs are plentiful, the gunfire keeps coming, and the whole thing has that wonderfully raw SOV energy that you just don’t get from modern productions.  And there’s a twist toward the end that I definitely won’t spoil.

 Let’s just say the movie has one more WTF moment waiting for you before the credits roll. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it polished? Hell no. Did I have a good time watching this forgotten little 1992 oddity finally get a proper physical release? Absolutely. And that’s really what makes releases like this so cool. There are thousands of obscure movies like Red Flag Down that could have disappeared completely if somebody hadn’t cared enough to dig them back up and put them on disc. For fans of SOV movies, regional filmmaking, ultra-low-budget action and those weird little cinematic treasures that you stumble across and immediately wonder how they managed to exist for this long without you knowing about them, Red Flag Down is definitely worth checking out, so head on over to MVDShop.com and snag your copy NOW.

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