Film

Deathcheaters

Deathcheaters is a 1976 Australian action film about two Vietnam veterans who become stuntmen and are recruited for a covert mission in the Philippines. It's a scrappy, low-budget spy-adventure hybrid that trades polish for genuine stunt work and a guerrilla spirit. Made in that brief window when Australian cinema was building something fierce.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy scruffy 1970s adventure built around stunt-heavy set pieces, where the spy plot is a loose backdrop for two mates' rough camaraderie rather than a puzzle to solve.

Skip it if the story can feel slack and the pacing stalls between set pieces, so if you need taut thrills or tight plotting, look elsewhere.

What it asks of you: At ninety-three minutes it is a short, easygoing ride that shifts between goofy and grim, so it wants you relaxed and willing to let its mood change under you.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Man from Hong Kong1975

George Lazenby as an Interpol agent in the Australian outback—exotic action cinema made on home soil with real stunts and a pulpy charm. Proof that 1970s Australian action could be genuinely thrilling.

But The plot is thin and the dialogue occasionally stiff; it's powered more by momentum and star power than narrative depth.

The Man from Hong Kong poster

Mad Max1979

The blueprint for Australian action cinema: visceral, inventive, and made for almost nothing. Mel Gibson's debut in a film that redefined what a low-budget action movie could achieve with creativity and nerve.

But By modern standards it moves slowly in places, and the opening drags before the chaos begins in earnest.

Mad Max poster

The Long Good Friday1980

Bob Hoskins in a taut, violent thriller about an East End crime boss navigating betrayal and warfare. Darker and more literary than Deathcheaters, but shares that ruthless pragmatism and the sense of loyalty tested by circumstance.

But It's bleak without relief, and the IRA subplot may feel dated or trigger-heavy depending on your headspace.

The Long Good Friday poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Deathcheaters

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Papillon1973

Both follow veterans pushed into life-or-death missions by forces beyond their control, using bonds of loyalty as their only real weapon.

Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman as prisoners plotting escape from Devil's Island. A men-in-chains epic that's also a meditation on friendship, injustice, and the will to survive. Shot on location with real jeopardy in every frame. The connection is fundamental: both are about outsider veterans using wits and nerve to survive missions impossible.

But It's long, methodical, and emotionally heavy. McQueen's haunted silence may read as distant rather than compelling.

Papillon poster
More like this (8)

Commando1985

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired special forces colonel dragged back into combat. Pure adrenaline: absurd, self-aware, with stunt work that still astonishes. The DNA of Deathcheaters amplified to epic scale.

But It's supremely silly. If you need grounded realism, this will test your patience.

Commando poster

Rambo: First Blood Part II1985

Stallone returns to Vietnam, this time as a lone-wolf operative. A Vietnam vet action film that's part real suffering, part comic-book fantasy. Captures the exact era and mood Deathcheaters was reaching for.

But Dated gender politics and a narrative that gets increasingly cartoonish as it accelerates.

Rambo: First Blood Part II poster

The Wild Bunch1969

Peckinpah's masterpiece about aging outlaws on one last job. Violence as poetry, male camaraderie as the only real thing left. The spiritual ancestor to every film about men living by codes they no longer fit.

But Nearly three hours, operatic gunplay, and a slow burn that demands patience. Not a thriller; a requiem.

The Wild Bunch poster

Checkpoint

Dirk Bogarde in a tense Cold War thriller about an escape plot in divided Berlin. Small-scale, character-driven spy fiction that proves espionage works better as intimate drama than spectacle.

But The pace is deliberate by modern standards, and the ending is ambiguous in ways that may frustrate.

Checkpoint poster

Operation Condor1991

Jackie Chan in a globetrotting adventure across deserts and ruins, improvising fights with the environment. Pure joy in movement, a film about friendship and loyalty glued together with stunts that shouldn't work but do.

But The plot is paper-thin and the dubbing occasionally laughable. It's spectacle over substance, which some find exhausting.

Operation Condor poster

Narrow Margin1990

Gene Hackman and Anne Archer on a bullet train, hunted. A small, efficient thriller about two people forced together under pressure. Lean and propulsive, with a climax that earns every ounce of tension.

But Feels a bit airbrushed and corporate—it's a polished studio product, not a raw independent gamble.

Narrow Margin poster

Z1969

Both are about how governments weaponize their own men, and how loyalty to country can become complicity. Where Deathcheaters is action, Z is tragedy—same machinery, opposite register.

A masterwork of political cinema: a parliamentary assassination spirals into corruption, conspiracy, and a state's machinery crushing truth. Tense as a thriller, urgent as a warning. Directed by Costa-Gavras with geometric precision. Prove that spy fiction can be art without apology.

But It's a French film from 1969 about Greek politics; the layers of context and distance may feel academic rather than thrilling.

Z poster

Kolchak: The Night Stalker1972

Both are Australian/1970s genre pieces made with urgency and low budgets that punch above their weight, and both rely on a lead actor's likability and nerve to carry conviction over technical resources.

Darren McGavin as a newspaper reporter investigating the paranormal in 1970s Las Vegas. A TV movie that invented modern horror-thriller television: atmospheric, smart, genuinely creepy, and proven by its two sequels and the legacy that followed.

But It's a TV movie from 1974—the pacing is slower, the scares are suggested rather than shown, and it's entirely reliant on mood and McGavin's wry charm.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker poster

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