Jack Abramoff, before he (yeah, allegedly) made a career out of bilking Native Americans and bribing Senators, was an executive producer for Red Scorpion, a crappy shoot-em-up film. It was a Cold War allegory about a Soviet killing machine sent to fight in Angola, who after seeing the crimes of his adopted army switched sides.
It seems that Abramoff saw the movie as his contribution to amuch larger anti-Communist campaign by Ronald Reagan’s “New Right.” At the time Abramoff, an ex-Chairman of the College Republicans, was chummy (still is, actually) with anti-government activist Grover Norquist who was giving economic advice to Angola’s murderous anti-government rebel group. Go read the Salon article, and see if you can’t find a few chuckles amongst the details of a troubled production that likely relied on illegal Apartheid-era South African funding. And if you can take it, watch the theatrical trailer.
