There are times you read about a film and your reaction is, “I need to see this weirdness.” When I read the brief review of The Last Match, I swore that if I went on Golan Globus Theater to talk about the movie, people would swear we made up this plot. It’s too wild of a concept with huge names. Why haven’t we been raving about this film for decades? The Last Match has never been released on video in America until this moment. This was not a VHS you found floating on a shelf at Phar-mor’s video section when it was released in 1991 in Japan and the Netherlands. Now it has arrived and deserves to be your top draft pick.
The film stars Oliver Tobias who was a Cinemax After Dark superstar having starred in The Stud with Joan Collins, Mata Hari with Sylvia Kristel and The Wicked Lady with Faye Dunaway. This time Tobias isn’t getting frisky with the ladies. He’s Cliff Gaylor the star quarterback of a team in Miami that’s coached by Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch & McHale’s Navy). They even play in the real Orange Bowl. The team wins at the last minute. But all is not good news. As his daughter Susann (Melissa Palmisano) gets busted at customs after becoming an unwitting mule for a drug runner. Instead of getting ready for the next game, Cliff flies down to free his daughter. However it’s not easy. The American Consul (Charles Napier from The Silence of the Lambs and Super Vixens) lets him know they have no pull with the government at the moment. The best he can do is visit an ex-American Lawyer (Psycho‘s Martin Balsam). He explains that even if he bribes the right people, there’s no way the daughter gets let go anytime soon. She’ll still have to serve three years at a woman’s prison run by Henry Silva (Ocean’s Eleven). Just when things look bleak, his coach Ernest Borgnine arrives with teammates eager to bust her out.
This is where the film becomes special. Normally I don’t tell you about the third act, but this is why The Last Match is must see. The players supposedly have military experience including coach. You’d maybe expect them to dress in all black like a Delta Force attack team or camo suits. No. They attack the women’s prison dressed in their football uniforms. They players are wearing their helmets as they firing machine guns and launching missiles from bazookas. They even punt footballs loaded with hand grenades. It’s brilliant!
Making it even more special is that Jim Kelly is part of the cast. Immediately you’re going to think what’s unusual about the star of Blackbelt Jones and Enter the Dragon being in a strange low budget film? But it isn’t the martial arts actor. Jim Kelly in the credits for The Last Match is the NFL Hall of Fame quarterback. The Jim Kelly who took the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowls (that they lost) is fully dressed in a football uniform and well-armed. If you are a member of the Bills Mafia, you need to get a copy of The Last Match for yourself and dozens to give away when you’re shopping at Wegman’s. What’s amazing is Jim Kelly made this film at his NFL prime. How did the Bills sign off on him being in the film? How did his scenes not get played at halftime on the Jumbotron to pump up the fans in Buffalo?
Also featured in the cast is NFL legend Jim Kiick. He was part of the Miami Dolphin’s Super Bowl winning seasons and notorious for his partying ways. But he’s all business here when it comes to raiding a woman’s prison.
The Last Match has one of the greatest twists in cinema history. The first half of the film is the story of a dad trying to get his daughter out of a stanky prison. We get a sense that he’s going to need to create a jailbreak. We get a sense that his teammates might show up to help. But director Fabrizio De Angelis has the football players in full uniform even if the shirts are white. They’re easy targets. None of this makes sense which is why The Last Match is more memorable than this year’s Super Bowl. I do hope the guys at Golan Globus Theater invite me over to talk about the film so that people can write us to claim The Last Match isn’t real. It is real and The Last Match is touchdown.
The Video is 1.66:1 anamorphic. The 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative lets the weirdness be extra sharp. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 2.0. While we’re used to Italian films having their soundtrack created in the ADR booth, The Last Match appears to have a live microphone on the location shoot. You can hear actors delivering lines. The movie is subtitled in English.
Blown Away (16:14) Is an interview with special effects artist Roberto Ricci. He gets into the nature of producers at this time when they steered the genre projects. They were fine spending cash on something that enhanced the film’s visual appeal. He talks about how Fabrizio De Angelis financed his films. He learned to ask for more than he needed since he knew the producer would only give him half of his number. He has great tales of cut rate filmmaking. He doesn’t have fun memories of shooting with the football players. They saw the film as a free vacation with their wives. He enjoyed working with Ernest Borgnine.
American Actors in a Declining Italian Cinema (29:03) is from director Mike Malloy whose Eurocrime! documentary is a must watch. He gets into the careers of Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van Cleef, Fred Wiliamson, Martin Balsam, Bo Svenson and Charles Napier had going between Hollywood and Rome. Clint Eastwood is shown how he only made four films early on in Italy and immediately stuck to major studio films back in California.
Understanding The Cobra (17:38) is a video essay about the Italian cinema cratered with the rise of television in the mid-70s. Many of the well-known directors find their projects funded by producer/director Fabrizio De Angelis nicknamed The Cobra. There’s a lot of background on how he worked with directors and his driving philosophy.
Audio Commentary with Michael A. Martinez. He’s deep into Italian exploitation films so you learn quite a bit. He gets into how The Last Match was part of the end of the great Italian exploitation cinema era.
Trailer (3:10) makes you think this is a football movie until the drug dogs show up at the airport. Then we see the players in football uniforms firing off machine guns at an airport. I can’t imagine anyone seeing this trailer and not saying, “I have to see this weirdness!”
Image Gallery (1:07) has international posters, VHS covers and press photos. The artwork for one poster has the players dressed as the Denver Broncos.
Cauldron Films presents The Last Match. Directed by Fabrizio De Angelis. Screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici & Vincenzo Mannino. Starring Oliver Tobias, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Henry Silva, Martin Balsam, Rob Floyd, Melissa Palmisano, Jim Kelly & Jim Kiick. Running Time: 93 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Release Date: February 11, 2025.
