Remade in 1985


Cool movie.

I think Schwarzenegger's Commando borrowed a lot from it: the movie-long run after his daughter from one altercation to the next, the girl is curlyhaired and dressed in overalls, the Rae Dawn Chong-like character appears in the second part of the movie, even Dan Hedaya is in this.

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It's also the basic plot of Taken (2008), which added a stylish European twist to a familiar 'father or husband goes after a kidnapped loved-one' formula.

It also has some similarities to the plot of Hardcore (1979), where George. C. Scott obsessively tracks down his missing teenage daughter in the dangerous Los Angeles underworld of underage porn and prostitution.

The kidnapped family member genre is probably as old as the art of storytelling itself. There are more examples of it in movies than you could shake a stick at. These include Don Siegel's espionage thriller The Black Windmill (1974), where Michael Caine's British secret service officer relentlessly pursues his kidnapped son (held hostage as part of an international blackmail conspiracy ) across Europe, plotting rescue and a bloody revenge on the kidnappers.

Or The Last Hard Men (1976), with Charlton Heston's veteran lawman on an increasingly violent quest to find his daughter and the criminal gang (led by James Coburn) who have kidnapped and raped her.

Many, many examples to choose from. It remains a very popular sub-genre. The most legendary example is probably John Ford's classic Western The Searchers (1956), to which countless movies owe a large debt of influence, including all of the examples listed here, and Night of the Juggler itself - a transplanted modern-day urban Western if ever there was one.

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