After making quite a career playing a kilt wearing "heel" in the World Wrestling Federation, Roddy Piper decided it was time to make the move into films. He definitely started this off right being in the deliriously bizarre low-budgeter Hell Comes To Frogtown and taking the title role in John Carpenter's They Live. But his true peak was in the years 1994 and 1995 when he made a whole slew of low-budget action movies of varying quality up on Canadian soil. There was the awful Immortal Combat, the passable Terminal Rush, and the entertaining No Contest and Back In Action (with Billy "Tae Bo" Blanks). There was also Jungleground, the subject of this review.

Take a handful of plot from The Warriors and sprinkle in a dash of Escape From New York and you'll pretty much get the idea behind Jungleground. It's yet another smaller budgeted Canadian shot effort that doesn't try to trend and new ground and sports a slew of lower scale action sequences - even though cars seem to explode at will almost - to try and keep your attention. But unlike a lot of action movies coming from the country around the same time (like most produced by and starring Jalal Merhi, even though his Tiger Claws one was fun), Jungleground is still watchable in a "gee, is this silly" kind of way. This is the type of movie that littered the cable movie channels back in the 90's.

Right from the get go we know that the certain area of town dubbed "Jungleground" is somewhere people just shouldn't be messing around in. This is proven when a pizza place that has been dealing drugs has one of their delivery vans blown-up courtesy of someone called "The Dragon".

Seems that our reptilian-named pyromaniac is the member of a gang called the "Rag Na Rockers" who not only take their name from Viking mythology but also follow a similar code set-out for them by their blonde, spiky-haired leader Odin (JR. Bourne). Seems that the Rockers don't take too kindly to drugs being peddled in their area and are willing to go to extremes to stop it.

Into the picture comes Piper and rough detective Jake. He's a good cop and is quite in love with his modern artist girlfriend. But that's all about to change when he gets caught in the middle of a shoot-out when an undercover operation he's overseeing goes wrong. His fellow officers are killed and he's taken captive by Odin and his Rockers.

The rest of Jungleground consists of Piper's character trying to escape from Rockers territory (Odin tells him that if he can get across the bridge connecting the "good" and "bad" areas of the city, he can go free) while being chased by gang members selected personally by Odin for their skills. This gives scripter Michael Stokes plenty of opportunity to let our hero take out his stalkers one-by-one while cracking one-liners galore (Piper gets to quip, "hi-ho, Silver" after killing the aptly named "Cowboy" gangster). Stokes also throws in a sub-plot where Jake gets help from a teenage prostitute to try and escape the area.

This is the kind of movie that'll be eaten up by fans of low-budget action movies. It's not a particularly well-done or exciting time but it gets a lot of gas out of Piper as the serviceable hero. But what will made fans of this type of thing stick around is probably the fact that there's an Uzi sporting rollerblader (yes, it's almost too silly for words), Piper gets to suplex one baddie into the roof of a car before slugging out a karate dude in a scene taken directly from an Indiana Jones movie (you know, when Harrison Ford just shoots the guy holding a sword), and Bourne gets to do his best "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" scream directly into the camera with his prey escapes.

Like I said, this isn't Piper's worst movie, but unless you have a high tolerance for (or are a fan of) low-budget 90's action flicks you're not going to have any real reason for watching this. (Chris Hartley, 12/5/07)

Directed By: Don Allan.
Written By: Michael Stokes.

Starring: Roddy Piper, Peter D. Williams, JR. Bourne, Nicholas Campbell.