MOVIE REVIEW : Another Vietnam Vet Goes Haywire

Just when you thought you’d seen the last suspense thriller to feature as its chief villain a deranged Vietnam veteran, along comes “Fear” (UA Egyptian in Hollywood and UA City Cinema in Orange) to keep the asinine cycle rolling along.

Not that this low-budget, soon-to-hit-video action scaremonger is likely to raise much in the way of protests or hackles. Its featured machine-gun-wielding psychotic, Jack (Robert Factor), may be portrayed as a veteran in need of a little post-traumatic stress syndrome psychiatry, but patrons of the frightless “Fear” will no doubt exit without emotional scars or the need for future counseling.

Poor, flashback-plagued Jack is just one of several dangerous convicts who escapes from a bus on the way to the pen; his main partner in psychopathy is the equally murderous and ever-belligerent Armitage (Frank Stallone).

Their ticket to freedom, or so they think, is a recreational vehicle inhabited by a bickering family (Cliff De Young and Kay Lenz, wasted as the parents) on vacation. It just so happens that gentle, ineffectual father is an ex-Green Beret himself! This doesn’t lead to any thrilling action sequences, alas, but does lead to the inevitable scene in which (yawn) Dad tries to convince Jack that the war is over and a hallucinating Jack menacingly replies that it isn’t.

First-time director Robert A. Ferretti builds effective and increasing levels of suspense early on, as he cross-cuts between palpably harrowing prison scenes and studies in nuclear family decay. Once the convicts and the clan meet up, though, there are no real scares to be found in “Fear” (MPAA-rated R for language and bloodshed), unless you count as scary the idea that the trauma of Vietnam vets is still grist for such escapist tripe at this late date.