My review was written in June 1991 after watching the film on Academy video cassette.
Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord makes an okay hero in the Italian action pic "American Tiger". Poorly scripted effort is being released directly to video in the States.
Credited to four writers, including director Sergio Martino, storyline unwisely attempts to inject a mystical element into an otherwise straightforward suspense plot.
Muscular Gayulord plays a young student in Mami who earns money pulling a rickshaw carrying tourists (pic's original title was "American Rickshaw"). Pic opens with him being kind to an old Oriental woman (Michi Kobi) by giving her a ride in the rain. It turns out she's an ageless witch who's been guarding a legendary Boar Statue that's about to fall into the hands of unscrupulous televangelist Donald Pleasence unless Gaylord saves the day.
While Peasence's henchman Daniel Greene is killing folks and hunting Gaylord for a missing key to obtain the statue, Mitch is thrown together with a young stripper (Victoria Prouty) as innocents on the lam. Martino stages the action scenes well with plenty of Miami location atmosphere but keeps injecting idiotic supernatural interventions, as Kobi starts fires or uses her pet cat and snake to try to confound the villains.
Prouty is an attractive redhead who deserves better roles than this while Gylord shows some promise as a he-man action star. Pleasence is embarrassing wearing a wig in flashbacks as a younger version of himself -he already was bald back in '50s movies, so the effect is incongruous..
