 |
| Images courtesy of Synapse Films |
Nick Castle has been everywhere from my ten-year-old childhood
in directing the John Hughes penned adaptation of Dennis the Menace to
my high school years behind the mask of Michael Myers when I finally saw John
Carpenter’s 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. A jack of all trades who co-wrote Carpenter's
Escape from New York as well as Steven Spielberg’s Hook, Castle
made his official directorial debut in 1982 with the game-to-film thriller TAG:
The Assassination Game. Featuring The
Terminator actress Linda Hamilton, Re-Animator star Bruce Abbott,
Forest Whitaker in his screen debut, Xander Berkeley and late Revenge of the
Nerds star Robert Carradine, it represented a unique spin on the college
comedy before veering into a genre thriller with mounting stakes. It also is kind of a time capsule as a film
that would be difficult to fund in today’s climate.
The plot is simple and unpretentious: a group of college
kids play a mock battle royale game of tag using children’s toy rubber dart
guns with the rules being if you get shot, you are ‘dead’ and out of the game
until one player remains with the apparent champion being Susan Swayze (Linda
Hamilton) following a smart winning streak.
Despite involving weaponry and the simulated use of firearms, it more or
less is a form of play not dissimilar from grade school recess. But when former champion Loren Gersh (Bruce
Abbott) whose entire life consists of playing this game 24/7 inadvertently
eliminates himself from the roster, the awkward man snaps and after acquiring a
real firearm begins actually murdering his “opponents” in the game and changing
his outfit to look like a James Bond villain and he has Susan Swayze on his
pending hitlist.
A New World Pictures college comedy turned thriller hybrid
which starts off kind of like Animal House without the sex, drugs or
nudity before becoming a kind of dress rehearsal for Linda Hamilton in what
would or wouldn’t become The Terminator, TAG: The Assassination Game is
an offbeat spoof of the James Bond film replete with a title sequence parodying
your typical Bond credits montage that shifts gears early on as a kind of
neo-noir ala Brick. A quickie
shot in four weeks by renowned Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant of Godard
and Varda fame featuring a serviceable score by future The Last Starfighter composer
Craig Safan, it is a regional little indie with a pulse and an altogether less
tawdry and more playful take on the college comedy despite the idea of campus assassination
games being a thing of the past.
Linda Hamilton shows off some of her future Sarah Connor energies
with how she takes out opponents and sneaks around running barefoot at one point
ala Terminator 2: Judgment Day and though she finds herself fleeing in
peril later she never devolves into a damsel in distress. Bruce Abbott who makes his screen debut as
the murdering psycho player Loren Gersh and besides figuring out who the mad
scientist character in Re-Animator would be the actor developed a
romantic relationship with Linda Hamilton offscreen and they married for
several years and had a son. Robert
Carradine had made a number of television appearances with his brother David
Carradine whom he also cameos with in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and
was only two films away from Revenge of the Nerds when he played the
role of the hero in this. Xander
Berkeley and Forest Whitaker make brief blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances
but basically the college set neo-noir boils down to Hamilton, Carradine and
Abbott.
Despite not making much at the box office theatrically at
the time, the $3 million New World flick became a cult VHS favorite over the
years particularly following the success of Nick Castle’s next project The
Last Starfighter which became a mainstream commercial success and cemented
Castle as an innovative, formidable director with box office draw. The new Synapse Films Blu-ray premiere of the
film originally came out as a limited edition exclusive through the website in
February of 2026. Circa September, that
same edition minus the limited collectible slipcover is being reissued as a
standard with the same scant extras including an original trailer and an audio
commentary with Nick Castle and Robert Carradine moderated by Sean Clark. Picture quality of the 35mm camera negative
scanned in 2K is nice looking and the 2.0 mono audio sounds fine. A lot of the appeal behind this depends on
whether or not you’re a fan of the supporting stars, the director or just
seeing The Most Dangerous Game by way of Back to School play out
onscreen. All in all, an easy one to
have fun with but there could’ve been more in the way of bonus features.
--Andrew Kotwicki
