Thursday, May 30, 2013

CYCLONE (1987)

Nerd/stud supergenius Jeffery Combs creates a motorcycle with all kinds of weapons on it: lasers, rockets...well, that's about it.  Also, despite the fact that it can deploy a parachute, it's not as fast as you would think, since it could barely even outrun an ancient station wagon!  What it does have though is an almost endless supply of energy thanks to a gadget that's about the size of a smartphone and can somehow extract hydrogen out of the air and convert it into energy.  Naturally, the bad guys want this energy supply and will stop at nothing (outside of hiring non-idiots) to get it.  So pretty much the entire film is just these morons making lame attempts at getting the power source...night club attack, car chase, kidnapping, torture and another car chase.  Boring.

Made with what looks to be the budget of an episode of "Knight Rider" or even "Street Hawk", CYCLONE is pretty lame.  The action scenes aren't even 80's television quality, the dialogue is stiff, top-billed Heather Thomas never even gets close to naked, Martin Landau slumming, silly story with a dumb as hell ending, cheap looking sets, an ear-destroyingly bad "punk" band and Jeffery Combs as a serious actor...hahaha, well alright that was pretty funny and the high point of the film. 

Worth a watch for fans of lower end action films.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

COLORADO TERRITORY (1949)

This loose retelling of HIGH SIERRA, finds Joel McCrea in the Bogart character as a criminal who's hired for a big robbery job, but troubled by his growing conscience.  Along the way to meet his new partners, he foils a stagecoach robbery and takes a liking to a old man and his beautiful daughter.  Once he arrives at the ghost town where his team is waiting for him, he finds them not to his liking and even worse is there's a woman with them.  As expected, the tension among the men grows and the robbery doesn't go as planned.  Now on the run from a bloodthirsty posse, McCrea has to make some quick decisions.

Strong cast and a great director, but for whatever reason COLORADO TERRITORY didn't do a whole lot for me.  It was an entertaining watch, but I felt like I'd already seen all of this before...probably because I did in HIGH SIERRA!  Also, I didn't care for seeing McCrea as a bad guy.  I understand that he was having a change of heart, but he's still a criminal and a killer.

Worth watching, but unfortunately it doesn't bring anything new to the table.

Original - High Sierra (1941)
Remake 2 - I Died a Thousand Times (1955)

Saturday, May 25, 2013

ALIENATOR (1990)

Thanks to films like DEADLY PREY and THE LAST SHARK, I like some cheap ripoffs of popular films, but sadly, ALIENATOR is complete rubbish from beginning to end.  It's total garbage.  It says made in 1990, but I don't believe it.  Not that it really matters, ALIENATOR could've been made in 1890 and it would still be a smelly turd of broken hopes and wasted time. 

Way off in space somewhere, a war criminal is sentenced to be death, but, before he can be executed, he escapes and makes his way to Earth where he's run over by some people driving around in the woods in a RV.  They take the injured man to a park ranger and suddenly a freaky-looking creature with a laser starts shooting at them.

Other stuff happens, but none of it matters.  The entire film is shit.  The script seems like it was written on the spot, the forest scenes are boring, the space station scenes look like they were filmed at a power plant, the acting can barely even be defined as acting, the special effects look really cheap, P.J. Soles slumming.

From the opening scene to the closing shot ALIENATOR is a massive bore.  Not even worth laughing at.  Skip it and never look back.