Director: Steve Carver
Format: VHS
Another day, another blog post, butthorn!
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| I have never seen a less descriptive cover to a VHS tape... |
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| Just watching this makes my stomach rebel. Not a Pepto person, me... |
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| Also, McBain keeps all the bullets he catches. It's actually a plot point. There are over 30. |
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| "Your worst nightmare, butthorn!" |
Much better.
Ok, so this movie is amazing. It makes no dang sense (thanks to having, I'm pretty sure, 3 writers), it's maybe 50% explosions, there are boobs early on (and not just Busey's), and the villains... wow the villains. Basically, a conglomerate of everyone the US was mad at from 1978 to 1988 - "Cubans, Nicaraguans, Russians, A-rabs" < direct quote from the movie, guys - has decided to steal a supertank called "Thunderblast" that the US is driving through Mexico for some stupid reason, and they're going to use it to take over the US itself. Through Mexico. Which isn't overly fond of any of those particular groups in the 1980s because Mexico, too, hated Communism, the drug trade, and South America in general.
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| This tank moves around during the movie, don't worry. Many explosions were had! |
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| We couldn't possibly know he was Russian without the furry hat, yeah? Also, the lead actress plays her character brash, but until the end, this is her role: damsel in distress. Ugh. |
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| Why are Cubans, Nicaraguans, Russians and middle eastern guys all trying to invade through Mexico? Why not. It's the 1980s. |
I didn't get a picture of the young, slimy bad guy, but he was pitch-perfect as the kind of awful, gleefully immoral, psychotic bad guy the 1980s were famous for.
My one big issue with this movie is that, like most 1980s action movies with a woman in them, there is a rape scene. We're spared a graphic scene, but everyone can still hear what he's doing to her, and frankly, that's just as upsetting. I know, we're supposed to hate him even more, but... we already hate him as a misogynistic warmonger who likes to hurt innocent people. He doesn't also need to be a rapist.
Then again, the movie doesn't go the normal 80s routes of playing the assault up as "cool" or just pretending like it never happened. The actress (Darlanne Fluegel) actually moves and acts like someone who is fighting through rage, humiliation, fear, and pain. When McBain shows up again, he doesn't immediately try to get frisky with her and always lets her come to him on her terms, except for once. She's having what might actually be a panic attack and he grabs her, holding her and letting her beat him up (seriously, either the foley artist was really good or she's pounding the crap out of him for realsies) and scream and cry and he just takes it. He doesn't kiss her or tell her to calm down. He just holds on and lets her get it out.
It's one of the most human and real moments in a movie that's 99% guns and insanity.
Capt. Devon Shepard (Fluegel) has two major badass moments. One of these is when McBain is captured by the bad guys and strapped to a giant wooden spool awaiting the firing squad. Devon steals a grenade sneaks it over to the spool by telling the bad guys (one of whom has just raped her) that she needs to get something from him for them. She instead blasts the spool down a hillside and McBain escapes.
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| Busey on the spool |
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| Totally Gary Busey on a spool rolling down an embankment. |
The other badass moment comes near the end. Devon and McBane escape and begin taking out the bad guys, and she just destroys everyone she comes across. We're talking some real Rambo stuff, here!
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| While McBain kills everyone he shoots at, she kills more people, I'm pretty sure. Also, she figures out how to hack the tank. |
Old Thunderblast does get used, but the bad guys have stupidly killed everyone who actually knows all the access codes, so Devon basically has to hack the unhackable tank and pilot it into the village. Her and McBain struggling to understand the ridiculous McGuffin Tank is amazing. So amazing that while they're listing off all the weapon systems, we were cracking jokes. Then Z joked that the code they just put in would activate the coffee maker.
A coffee maker popped out of the wall of the tank just after Z made the joke.
There was stunned silence for a split second, then screams of laughter!
There was a lot of laughter in this movie, despite the awfulness of the implied rape scene. Ugh. But the rest of the movie is a freaking riot - how can you resist a movie whose main character, whose hero, habitually calls people butthorn?!
This movie was awesome, and I strongly recommend you find it in your local thrift store or library, because, man, is it good to watch things explode, sometimes.
Besides, this was probably the last movie Busey worked on before the motorcycle accident that knocked his brains loose and nearly killed him. It's good to see what might have been.
Here's a picture of Gary Busey playing the saxophone for no real reason in the movie:
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| Seriously, though, why? |
Go Enjoy Something!
FC
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