Being a college student in the ’80s and author of the ’80s Teen Flick Festival book series, there are films that take me back to my youth in their vibe. Not just because I saw the film back in the day at a theater on or near my campus. Sometimes there’s something in the film that reminds me of something I did back then. TAG – The Assassination Game (from Spring of 1982) brings me back to two things from my time at N.C. State. First was Gaming Society that met up once a week to play various tabletop games in the old student senate room. It was mostly guys sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons or other games that were sold in the back of Hungates hobby shop at Crabtree Valley Mall. This was also the time when “Lazer Tag” became real. Previously people had gotten into paintball, but the bad part of the game was that your clothes were stained and those paintballs hurt when they hit your body. You could lose an eye. Lazer Tag was safer without any staining. It was a nerdy night out since there was a Lazer Tag arena at a strip mall in North Raleigh. However nobody thought to combine the Gaming Society with Lazer Tag like is done in TAG – The Assassination Game. It’s probably a good thing judging from what happens in the film.
Things open up with what looks like a killer with a gun roaming a college campus except when it comes time to shoot their target, a plastic dart with a suction cup is launched instead of a bullet. This is a game. Although the film has fun by giving the opening credits in the style of a James Bond film. Alex Marsh (Robert Carradine, Revenge of the Nerds) works on the school paper and wants to write a noir detective novel. This leads to fantasies that he’s in a Bogart movie. The girl of his Bogart dreams busts into his life one night. Susan Swayze (Linda Hamilton, The Terminator) seeks shelter in his dorm room. Turns out she’s being pursued by another TAG player. He’s immediately taken by Susan and does that thing those of us always did that worked at the school paper: Alex wants to do a story on the TAG game. This leads him to the student headquarters of the TAG game where the head is doing his best to be like James Bond and Q at once. Using a bit of espionage, Alex gets the information on Susan and begs her for an interview. She takes him on a mission to experience what an adrenaline rush the game becomes. They’re in the middle of the big school tournament. She’s aiming to win. She even works a bit with her friend Nancy (Kristine DeBell, Meatballs). Alex falls hard for Susan and loses his journalistic objectivity as he wants to be her boyfriend. She’s all about the game at this time. What neither of them knows is that the game has turned serious. One of the players snaps and swaps out the plastic darts for real bullets. He wants to be a real assassin and take Susan out of the game.
Writer-Director Nick Castle at this point in his career was best known for playing Michael Myers in the original Halloween movie. He also co-wrote Escape From New York with John Carpenter. He also wrote the script for masterpiece that is Skatetown, U.S.A. He’d go onto direct The Last Starfighter, The Boy Who Could Fly, Tap, Dennis The Menace and Major Payne. Nick was supposed to direct Hook until Steven Spielberg took over the project. Castle does a great job of making the film have a slick spy feeling. This was his first directorial effort and he goes all out in building tension. This doesn’t feel like a cheap teen flick.
TAG – The Assassination Game is a fantastic ’80s college film. Yet it was extremely obscure even in the age of VHS. I don’t remember anyone at the Gaming Society swearing I needed to see the film. It has the big stars of both Revenge of the Nerds and The Terminator. Those were two classics of the era that ran on the big screen at the student center and were often checked out at North American Video. Linda Hamilton being pursued the player with the real gun seems like her getting ready to be chased by Arnold Swartenegger in The Terminator. This would have been a perfect double feature rental. Not once did member of the Gaming Society propose we should make a real version of TAG. Of course they’d suggest we use Lazer Tag stuff instead of dart guns so we don’t hit anyone in the eyeball with a suction cup. Nobody needed to see the Vice Chancellor to deal with assault charges. By the mid ’80s, having students running around with guns and firing them in the dorms wasn’t a cool thing. TAG – The Assassination Game deserves a revival as both a movie and a game (with the Lazer Tag guns).
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The transfer is a 2K restoration from 35mm vault materials. Linda Hamilton looks killer on the screen. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono. You’ll hear the footsteps creeping up on the players The movie is subtitled in English
Audio Commentary with writer/director Nick Castle, star Robert Carradine and moderator Sean Clark. They get into the strange and fun things that happened during the shoot. Robert Carradine recently passed away so it’s good to hear him recall the times.
Theatrical Trailer (2:34) makes it seem like people are getting shot down on college campuses.
Synapse Films present TAG – The Assassination Game. Directed by Nick Castle. Screenplay by Nick Castle. Starring Robert Carradine, Linda Hamilton, Kristine DeBell, Perry Lang, John Mengatti, Michael Winslow, Frazer Smith, Xander Berkeley and Forest Whitaker. Running Time: 91 minutes. Rating: Rated PG. Release Date: September 8, 2026.
Here’s the ad for Lazer Tag
