William Dorn (Chuck Connors, Fox’s Werewolf series from ’87) is the type of guy who gets wild hairs up his ass about littering, traffic violations, muggings, the price of peaches, rude wait staff,… pretty much you name it, and it makes him get angry… angry as fuck, and then… he just sort of acts like an asshole really.
Somethings make him really mad however, and his being a serial bomber helps him there as he constantly explodes shit all over town… including the populace… much to the chagrin of the incredibly named Lieutenant Geronimo Minneli (TV’s Dr. Ben Casey, Vince Edwards)… especially since The Mad Bomber keeps taunting the local law with recordings of his manifestos.
Enter: serial rapist George Fromley (Neville Brand, Killdozer) who managed to get an eyeful of ol’ Dynamite Dorn in the act (while he was sexually assaulting a mentally ill mute woman holding a dolly… subtle this shit ain’t), and chances are he’s going to sing like a canary thanks to the evidence the police have against him regarding his nighttime activities.
Will Dorn keep on havin’ a blast (many in fact) or will the fuzz and a sex pervert be enough to stop his reign of fiery terror?!
The Mad Bomber (or The Police Connection as it’s at times stupidly known) is the exact type of glorious trash that hits all the right spots for all the wrong reasons… well some of them are right reasons… just not the super sleazy rape parts… I mean they’re stomach churningly effective, if not a tad melodramatic… I’m going to elaborate… “You’re welcome” or “I’m sorry” respectively…
Created by B-movie producer/director/writer Bert I. Gordon (The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants, and The Food of the Gods, to mention just a few), The Mad Bomber features a perpetually frowning, Coke bottle glasses wearing psychopath who strolls around town just fucking up people’s (some of whom are kind of douchey) days… the one’s he isn’t turning into bloody messes with his constant bomb bullshit that is… and that would and could be enough for one exploitation flick, but Bert’s goin’ fuckin’ huge here and throwing in a rapist… a rapist who has a special jerk-off shed where he beats it to nude posters and equally nude home movies of his oft oily wife… you’d think with all of that… including actually fucking the wife in question… would be enough, but nope… not for our… I have no idea what he is besides disgusting…
Add in some fun police brutality, a score that is simultaneously a discordant, totally awesome, experimental musical exploration and the ancestor of the instrumental interstitials from the Beastie Boy’s Check Your Head album (kudos to composer Michel Mention on that one), extras that look like the O.G. costume of Marvel Comics’ Dazzler, and an often hilarious photo matching/police sketch fumetti sequence… fuck, I didn’t even mention the humongous computer utilized by the police…
Add in some truly impressive explosions (shout out to the “student” extras appearing in one scene… it’s hard to chose who is better… the guy jumping like a jackrabbit for no reason, or the chick laughing as she exits stage left) and you have Grindhouse perfection through and through!
Adding to the fun are the bonus materials collected here… materials which include three additional ways to view the feature such as with an isolated score track, an interview with Gordon, or with a full audio commentary from author/horror scholar Kier-La Janisse (joined by retired bomb squad detective Mike Digby)!
Also included are interviews with Gordon’s daughter Patricia (who gives a remembrance of her father via an audio chat), and actress Cynthia MacAdams, a modern look at the film’s shooting locations, the TV cut of the film (featuring a sanitized look at Fromley’s jerkin’ shed… also the jerkin’ is gone… along with a lot of other things), and TV spots for the film.
The result of the gritty cop dramas of the day and the absolute need to fill Grindhouse seats with copious nudity (and a splash of gore), The Mad Bomber is top-shelf exploitation through and through!