Lights, Cameroon, action! Film ties LV, Africa

Lisa Ferguson

Friday, March 14, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

What do Las Vegas and the African coastal region of Bantus have in common?

An action-adventure movie, thanks to film producer and part-time local resident Raymond Polydoor.

The 26-year-old Cameroon native wrote, produced and directed "Diamonds from the Bantu," which was filmed on location in and around Las Vegas last fall.

The independently-produced Polydoor Pictures flick stars former "Diff'rent Strokes" actor Todd Bridges and marks the acting debut of Joe Jackson, patriarch of the famous Jackson family of entertainers.

The plot follows a young female movie studio owner (played by newcomer Alysia Jakubowski) whose husband, an international diamond fence, is murdered.

Before his death he gave her a computer disk containing directions to a diamond treasure hidden in Bantus, where some of the world's top-quality diamonds are unearthed.

"It's part of a historical and political story" of the region, explained Polydoor, who also resides in Los Angeles. "It's based on reality and we mixed it up with some fiction."

Also searching for the treasure is the dead man's partner in crime, played by Stoney Jackson (no relation, of "Angles in the Outfield" and "CB4").

"That's when all of the mayhem and the action and the greed and the love comes in," Polydoor says.

Joe Jackson and Bridges figure into the plot as movie producers out to help solve their friend's murder.

In real life, the two have known each for nearly 20 years. (Jackson's megastar daughter, Janet, was Bridges' "Strokes" co-star.)

"It's amazing when you're working with someone you know. You're always on the same cue," Bridges said recently in a phone call from Chicago, where he hosts a morning radio show.

Since his highly publicized arrests on narcotics and weapons charges three years ago, Bridges has continued to act. He recently completed films with former child actors Corey Feldman ("Stand By Me") and "Punky Brewster" star Soleil Moon-Frye.

He was turned onto "Bantus" by Stoney Jackson, another long-time friend. "I thought the movie came out pretty well. It was actually a lot of fun," he said.

But Joe Jackson could have done without the long hours on the set, especially during one early morning shot at a mine in Searchlight.

"It was cold," he says. "Everybody was shivering."

But the goosebumps paid off: Jackson says he's already fielding offers and scripts for other projects. "I'll try it a while," he says.

Even Jackson's Las Vegas home had a part in the movie, as did abodes in Spanish Hills and the Pamplemousse restaurant on East Sahara Avenue.

Surprisingly, the "Bantus" script took only two weeks to write and 25 days to film on a "small" budget of $1.5 million.

If all goes according to Polydoor's plans, the movie should hit theater screens late this summer, just in time to battle for box-office bucks during the biggest movie-going season of the year.

But Polydoor's not worried. "We're ready for competition," he says. "It's not a 'bang-bang, shoot-them-all' (type of) action-adventure. It's an action-adventure with a story. Either you'll like it or you won't."

The martial-arts expert and former stunt man is already at work on his next film, "Search for the Lost Legacy" which will be filmed in Las Vegas and Arizona.

"I like to see my dreams coming to life," Polydoor says, "to take a story and make it walk."