When is a Jessie Crowder film not a Fred Williamson vehicle? When it's BLIND RAGE, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

After Johnny Duran (Charlie Davao, THE KILLING OF SATAN), vice president of Manila's Oriental Bank, attends top secret meeting in Los Angeles with the government who have arranged for fifteen million dollars to be transferred to the bank to help friendly Asian nations that may be destabilized by the fall of Vietnam, he is approached by crook Lew Simpson (B.T. Anderson) who offers him a quarter of a million dollars to help with a heist of the money once it is transferred. Simpson's plan is to use blind men who are skilled enough to rob the bank but who cannot identify them if caught. They include mobster-turned-pimp Willie Black (D'Urville Martin, DOLEMITE) who was blinded by the syndicate; Lin Wang (Leo Fong, NINAJA ASSASSINS), a Tong enforcer blinded when he tried to double cross them; "Blind Matador" Hector Lopez (Darnell Garcia, ENTER THE DRAGON), and magician The Amazing Anderson (Dick Adair, SUPERCOCK) who are to be trained by tutor Sally (Leila Hermosa, MURDER IN THE ORIENT) for their various roles in the plot, along with former criminal and recent School for the Blind graduate Ben Guevara (Tony Ferrer, COVER GIRL MODELS) to handle the security system's electronics. They train for weeks at a remote country house, during which Sally becomes closer to Ben and may just double cross Duran if any of the blind men are meant to survive the heist.

A Philippine production globe-hopping with second unit footage in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Mexico, and Tokyo – where all the interiors look like Philippine sound stage sets – BLIND RAGE makes for a rather dull heist flick that can't decide whether Davao's Duran is a middle management flunkie or a criminal mastermind, the sole bit of in-fighting amongst that two-dimensional blind robbers is having the black man attempt to rape Sally, and having the audacity to advertise itself as a Fred Williamson vehicle starring his Jessie Crowder character from DEATH JOURNEY, NO WAY BACK, and THE LAST FIGHT when the cigar-chomping actor literally does not turn up until the last ten minutes of the film for the climactic fight scene set in Los Angeles against a novel backdrop (“It’s going down right now at the International House of Pancakes!”) Although featuring a seasoned cast of Filipino talent – the theme song "The System" is sung by actress Helen Gamboa whose husband Tito Sotto (TNT JACKSON) is credited with the score which includes library tracks heard in KILL AND KILL AGAIN – no one including the American talent (how did D'Urville Martin end up in this?) really makes an impression until Williamson's special appearance. Director Efren C. Piñon had previously directed Fong in NINJA ASSASSIN, Fong and Davao in THE OUTSIDE MAN, and Ferrer in THE EXIT.

BLIND RAGE was picked up by Trans World and released on VHS by MGM, ending up back with MGM during their 1990s acquisition of the Epic package but made its digital debut on the unauthorized Video Asia nine-film set THUG CITY CHRONICLES, VOLUME 1. Derived from a brand new scan from MGM's elements, Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is bright and clean apart from some light wear but bears the hallmarks of Philippine color film processing with bold reds and greens, somewhat muddy blues and browns, skin tones that range between pink and orange depending on the lighting, and overall softness that cannot be blamed on an old scan. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track with its mix of stilted post-sync and live sound fares well while optional English SDH subtitles are also included.