Showing posts with label Martin Landau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Landau. Show all posts

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.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

WITHOUT WARNING (1980)

[Update 03/02/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I'm not sure where, but somewhere along the way I got it into my handsome brain that this was an action-packed alien invasion extravaganza, but I was obviously incorrect because this movie is boring as a bitch!

A tall alien (who gets maybe two minutes of screen time) is lurking around out in the woods hunting humans. His only weapon is a kind of parasite/frisbee that he throws at people. It latches on and bites you to death or something. That sounds exciting, but it's not because the vast majority of the movie is people wandering around talking and talking and talking.

The cast is impressive (Martin Landau, Neville Brand, Jack Palance, Ralph Meeker and David Caruso), but you've got to give them something to do. I'd be more interested in seeing what went on behind the scenes...I can just see Jack Palance snarling grizzledly while arm-wrestling Neville Brand as Landau laughed maniacally in the corner. It would have been awesome!!!

Zero nudity, almost zero action, really short shorts on David Caruso, lots of scenes shot in the dark, completely random PSYCHO reference. Skip it. The only reason to watch this movie is the scene where Jack Palance charges the alien while yelling "ALLLLLIIIIEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNN!!!!".
Could David Caruso's shorts be any shorter?!