Hard Knox (1984)
While browsing the entertainment section of Walmart or, more likely, the “please buy me” table at a garage sale, you have probably run across one of Mill Creek Entertainment’s “MegaPacks” of DVDs. These large box sets contain 50 movies and come with exciting names like “50 Drive-in Movie Classics” or “50 Sci-Fi Invasion Films.” Sometimes they even bundle them together — I paid $5 for “100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies,” which included two smaller collections (“50 Swinging Seventies” and “50 Excellent Eighties”). When you think of “excellent eighties movies” you might think of movies like Footloose, Karate Kid, or Top Gun, but… those are a little out of Mill Creek’s reach. Instead, you’ll find a stack of movies you’ve never heard of with titles like “Tuareg the Desert Warrior”, “My Mom’s a Werewolf”, and, from 1984, “Hard Knox”.
The recipe for Hard Knox is pretty simple. Mix equal parts of Police Academy and Stripes in a blender and then use a sifter to remove any humor, intelligence, or actors with talent.
In the film, retired military pilot Colonel Joe Knox arrives at the military school he previously graduated from only to discover it may close down. Knox’s mission is to whip a new wave of recruits into shape and ultimately lead them in competition against a rival school. This is literally the plots of Police Academy 1 and 4 combined. One of the few recognizable actors is a young Alan Ruck (Cameron from Ferris Bueller) who plays Frankie Tyrone, the stereotypical “if I act crazy I can get out of here” character. There are several other characters of course, but for the most part you’ll just want them to go away.
The kids break each other down before building the team back up, and even ol’ Knox is forced to learn new tricks when the school lets some danged-ol’ women-folk join the club. The film jumps between dorm scenes, people in military uniforms having boring conversations, and training sequences. All of these scenes build toward a showdown between the newly recruited dopes and another school (see: Police Academy 1). Each squadron of recruits is given a pouch full of paint-filled balloons and sent out into the forest to do battle. The kids are given balloons instead of guns with live ammo because they would have taken out the director before turning on one another.
Mill Creek goes the extra mile here by providing a DVD directly sourced from a VHS tape (occasionally the tracking breaks loose). Every 8-10 minutes the movie fades to black, revealing that Hard Knox was actually a made for television film. According to IMDB had the film been successful it was intended to launch a television show, and since you’ve never heard of the television show Hard Knox, that tells you all you need to know about the movie.