The "Reb Yell" resounds in high definition on Severin Films' Blu-ray of Bruno Mattei's STRIKE COMMANDO.

During a tense mission in which Major Harriman (Mike Monty, CANNIBAL WORLD) deploys his Strike Commando team to infiltrate a major Vietcong depot, his arrogant superior officer Colonel Radek (Christopher Connelly, MANHATTAN BABY) puts the mission above human lives and gives the order early to blow the depot. The entire Strike Commando squad apart from leader Mike Ransom (Reb Brown, HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF) who washes up down the river in a jungle stronghold of French missionary Leduc (Luciano Pigozzi, BARON BLOOD) and Vietnamese locals whose village and church were destroyed by sadistic Russian officer Jakoda (Alex Vitale, BEYOND THE DOOR 3) working in cahoots with the Vietcong. Ransom manages to contact his base and arrange for a rendezvous pickup of himself and the villagers; however, the group are ambushed in the jungle and Radek refuses to let the choppers return to rescue the villagers after Ransom has been recovered. Although prevented from exacting retribution against Radek for the deaths of his team, Ransom gets the colonel's approval to go back to the jungle to collect photographic evidence of Russian presence in Vietnam. When Ransom is captured by Jakoda, Harriman has suspicions about just how readily Radek is to write off Ransom.

The earliest of director Bruno Mattei's and writer/assistant director Claudio Fragasso's filmmaking ventures in the Philippines, STRIKE COMMANDO is the most conventional, the most derivative, and the most boring. Brown gives it his all, venturing not always successfully beyond his standard range – he still yells a lot – while Connelly and Monty (dubbed by William Berger) provide stoic support. Vitale is hard to take seriously as a formidable villain – even before he becomes a dimestore imitation of Richard Kiel's Jaws during the finale – Loes Kamma (CALIGULA'S SLAVES) has little more to do as Jakoda's colleague than Karen Lopez (AMERICAN COMMANDOS) as Ransom's potential love interest Cho-Li. The attempts at pathos with scenes between Ransom and Disneyland-obsessed local boy Lao (Edison Navarro, DOUBLE TARGET) are less effective and more laughable than those bits featuring David Brass (INDIO) as an American POW sadistically tortured mentally and physically into acting as a sort of Tokyo Rose for the Vietcong. The action scenes are not as polished as later Mattei/Fragasso pics like the more entertaining ROBOWAR and SHOCKING DARK, but the ending features a laughable single frame dummy substitution during a death scene featuring a rocket launcher that must be seen to be believed. As with the other Mattei films of the time, Jim Gaines (AFTER DEATH) is on hand as the only African American mercenary in the Philippines.

Released direct-to-video stateside by International Video Entertainment, STRIKE COMMANDO has been scarce in the digital age apart from multi-film PD disc sets until Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray from a 2K scan of the original camera negative. Image quality is variable given the jungle location shooting and editor Mattei's use of footage from other films – including some significantly grainier stock footage – but the footage original to the film varies between some great close-ups and vivid jungle greenery to some shots with lesser shadow detail (possibly due to insufficient fill lighting). Although cinematographer Ricardo Grassetti (ZOMBI 3) would lean heavy on lens diffusion in later Mattei Filipino films, that does not seem to have been the case here. The LPCM 2.0 mono English track mixes dubbing and production audio, with foley effects and a slathered synth score by Luigi Ceccarelli (NOSFERATU IN VENICE) meant to smooth things out (the optional Italian LPCM 2.0 mono track sounds a tad more refined). Optional English SDH subtitles are available for the English dub but no translation has been included for the Italian track.

Severin offers two viewing options: the theatrical cut (91:49) and a heretofore unavailable extended cut (102:09). Since the additional footage is of the same quality as the theatrical cut, one assumes that the scenes might have been included on the negative assembly but not on the interpositive and internegatives used for earlier theatrical and video distribution (this is not unusual with Italian productions where the negative is not always conformed to a release cut). The audio for these scenes is of significantly lesser quality – these bits are in English on both tracks – although these bits include dubbed dialogue, effects, and scoring, suggesting that they have not been salvaged from some workprint cut of the film (presumably a screener of a longer cut prepared for festival sales and then fine-tuned before actual distribution). The cut scenes are only of interest in seeing how the film was scripted and what Mattei discovered was unnecessary in conveying the plot. The additions (or subtractions) include a two minute sequence that introduces Leduc, Lao, and Cho-Li discussing the still-unconscious Ransom – the theatrical cut transitions from Lao discovering Ransom floating in the river to him waking up from a nightmare – a three minute sequence in which Harriman is dissuaded by a general from filing a formal complaint about Radek's conduct, a two minute sequence in which Lao asks whether Cho-Li is in love with Ransom, and another three minute scene between Harriman and the general between the climax and the finale. If the film has any replay value, it is more likely in the theatrical version than the extended one however nice it is to have these bits since deleted scenes are scare for Italian genre cinema.