MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Scavengers’: Small Favors

Oh, B-Movie, where has thy glory fled? Most lower-budget action-adventure films these days are loud, violent little messes, ineptly trying to copy the loud, violent, big-budget messes.

Not quite so, “Scavengers” (citywide). True, it’s mostly a mess, just like the others. But parts of it have an ingratiating, tongue-in-cheek quality. There are pretty African locations, some amusingly vigorous action scenes and a heroine of sunny-cheeked, apple-blossom sexiness. Be thankful for (very) small favors.

In “Scavengers,” college teacher Tom (Kenneth Gilman) is followed by his ex-girlfriend, crusading reporter Kim (Brenda Bakke--she of the blond hair and sunny cheeks), on an African trip devoted to the study of his pet passion, vultures. Tumbling after them, in a fervid blur of double-crosses and assassinations--scavenged up from Lord-knows-what slumgullion of stereotypes--are a motley crew of sadistic, half-crazy KGB agents, sadistic, clean-cut CIA agents and sadistic local dictators, all wildly seeking drug scandal evidence concealed in a Bible unwittingly carried by the hapless Tom. The villains’ weapons are numerous and deadly: knives, bazookas, machine guns, even, at one point, crocodiles and a python. Mostly, they stay true to form and kill us with cliches.

Soon, this low-rent “Raiders of the Lost Ark” has Tom and Kim grappling with heavies in a wildly pitching cargo plane with no door; hooking up, in true cock-and-bull fashion, with a plucky jungle pilot, February (played by--no kidding--Cocky (Two Bull) Tlhothalemaj); and fleeing in an ambulance and wheelchair from Russian tanks.

Writer-director Duncan McLachlan occasionally comes up with something weird. There’s a scene where an army of bikers all zoom out of a plane and parachute down like heavy-metal insects--and another where February rains the villains with dung, while the unruly crocodiles stage an impassioned revolt. “Scavengers” (MPAA-rated PG-13, for language and sex) cannot be mistaken for anything good--and, if you heard the background score by itself, you’d run from the theater. But, occasionally, the movie makes you smile. In the current violent, mess-ridden B-programmer world, that’s a (very) minor strength.