Stallone and Mitchum (Frank and Chris, that is) are a deadly duo taking on the SAVAGE HARBOR on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome's Archive limited edition label.

Merchant marines Joe (Frank Stallone, TEN LITTLE INDIANS) and Bill (Chris Mitchum, FACELESS) are on shore leave in San Pedro for a few weeks. While Bill hooks up with topless dancer Roxey (THE ADDAMS FAMILY's Lisa Loring), Joe falls in love with Anne (Karen Mayo-Chandler, HARD TO DIE) unaware that she was until moments before he rescued her from a rapey motorist a heroin-addicted prostitute on the run from her human trafficking pimp Harry Kane (Anthony Caruso, FORT MASSACRE). Joe proposes to Anne and makes her his partner in his planned avocado farm business after his final tour of duty but returns six months later to find no trace of her. Little does he know that Harry and his thugs – Jim (Nicholas Worth, DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE), Slim (Gary Wood, THE GLORY STOMPERS), and Hank (Patrick Wright, THE CHEERLEADERS) – have tracked Anne down, got her back on the horse, and put her back to work. When Harry hears from Harold (director Carl Monson), the gay proprietor of Anne's former apartment building/cathouse, that Joe is looking for Anne, he has Joe roughed up as a warning. When Joe continues searching for Anne, badgering another of Harry's girls Jenny (Greta Blackburn, PARTY LINE) for information, he decides that strung out Anne – who confuses all of her clients with either Joe or her cold father (Mike McCloskey, THE CLASS REUNION) – is more trouble than she is worth and arranges for her to have an "accident"; whereupon, Joe and Bill become a two-man army taking on Harry and his entire operation.

While director Carl Monson had previously brought us the ultra-sleazy Box Office International trio THE TAKERS, PLEASE DON'T EAT MY MOTHER, and A SCREAM IN THE STREETS – and indeed does a bit of cross-dressing as a more benign character than the latter film's Con Covert – the unambitious but enjoyable trashy SAVAGE HARBOR is one of the few Mardi Rustam (EVILS OF THE NIGHT) productions that appears to have not gone through multiple reshoots or was edited from another production, seeming tailor-made for the direct-to-video market of the eighties with just enough nudity, violence, and moderate sleaze to stay this side of an R-rating. Former child actress pops her top for Robert Mitchum's son, Stallone and Mayo-Chandler do a lot of dissolve-heavy romantic romping around picturesque locations before a picnic sequence veers sharply into a bit of brief bumping and grinding, but it is third banana Blackburn who makes any meaningful impression as a hooker who may have had enough (performances are generally competent apart from a murderously bad cameo by Rustam as a doctor). The action sequences are entertaining with a few instances of fisticuffs giving way to explosions, a fight in a pickup truck that includes a character getting tangled in a rope and dragged, a car chase through the L.A. river bed, and squibs aplenty during the climax. A hallucinatory sequence in which Anne relives a trauma experienced with her father seems to recall similar mock-surreal sequences in Monson's more conventional TEN LITTLE INDIANS-esque horror film debut LEGACY OF BLOOD. Editor Henri Charr had previously re-edited and shot new footage that transformed the Rustam production PLEASE DON'T EAT THE BABIES into ISLAND FURY.

Released directly to video by Southgate in 1989, SAVAGE HARBOR comes to Blu-ray as the inaugural release of Vinegar Syndrome's Archive series – limited to 2,500 copies with a folded poster, reversible cover, and bottom-loading thick cardboard slipcase – from a 2K scan of the original camera negative. As befits a barely released film, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray transfer is virtually spotless with well-lit interiors and bright exteriors evincing crisp detail and textures apart from some of the romantically "diffused" shots and a couple shots where the focus lags behind the action. The DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track gets the job done although the sound design is nothing special. Dialogue is clear, gunshots and explosions are undistorted, and the bland synth scoring has little depth. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.