Clay Pigeon a.k.a. A Trip to Kill preliminary thoughts and lots of spoilers

I was pleasantly surprised with Clay Pigeon (a.k.a. A Trip to Kill).

The performances by actors I generally don't like were quite good and the core story was excellent and very familiar to me. :)

Despite my misgivings about Tom Stern's acting ability, outside of a couple of moments where his character Joe whined a bit much, he was actually pretty good as a prototype Rambo/Snake Plissken styled veteran gone hippie.

Rambo in the sense of letting himself go to seed both inside and out to the point of a slow-burning crack up, and both Rambo/Plissken for their disdain of authority and some interesting butt kick towards the end of the film.

Quick note: when talking about Rambo here, it's in reference to David Morell's First Blood characterization, not the more heroic celluloid take Sly Stallone offered up a decade later. Speaking of which, I wonder if the script writers read First Blood when writing this as they mention the final straw triggers which pushed Rambo over-the-edge several times in the first few scenes of Clay Pigeon.

Telly Savalas was also really good as a surprisingly subdued button pusher, allowing for Stern's P.T.S.D. affected vet to explode verbally and physically by films' end.

In the WTF casting department, Burgess Meredith as an old man wanting to be a hippie and Robert (man from U.N.C.L.E.) Vaughn as the drug kingpin. Bad choices both. Vaughn won the worst acting award for this film and I'm grateful he was underused.  I've never liked Burgess, although he was pretty goofy here.
While I am under the impression that Stern overacted in the majority of the counterculture films I've seen him in, he's really pretty good here. If I really want to nitpick about his portrayal he's about five years too old for the part (ex-cop who volunteered for Vietnam, whose near death experience made him go hippie) but he made it work, particularly when the stuff hit the fan in the final act.
Basically, ex-cop and vet Joe Ryan has gone hippie upon his return from 'Nam. A chance arrest introduces Joe to Telly Savalas' government agent who desperately wants to find L.A. drug kingpin Henry N. (Vaughn). Against his wishes, Joe is thrown into the mix of tracking down Vaughn's character (a clay pigeon in the rifle sights), as more of his friends die Joe's becomes increasingly aware that he never left the war behind. As he snaps towards the films' climax, Joe gets Vaughn but not Savalas who unearthed all the baggage the vet brought back from 'Nam.

This was much better than I hoped with only a couple of points where the film almost crawled to a dead stop. When Stern or Savalas were on screen they propelled the story along, when the film focused on anyone else that was the where the hiccups started.

I love finding prototypes of characters I adore (and am trying to recreate myself), so I wouldn't mind if this surfaced as a real dvd one of these days. As for Stern, Clay Pigeon makes me think I'll see something else with the guy. Even if him playing hippie wasn't always successful.

Another note: I can only wonder if John Carpenter saw this film as he was preparing the Escape from New York script (the first he completed in 1974). It's too bad the film abruptly ends with Stern's Joe all but ready to kill Telly Savalas for making him realize he never left the 'war'.