Al Ruscio – Missile Test

Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star Wings Hauser has one of the best 1980s action flick character introductions in Deadly Force, from 1983. Viewers first see him on the gritty streets of New York City, playing a game best described as ‘rat roulette.’ Next, he’s drunkenly tickling piano keys in a bar, not without some competence. Then he’s a passenger in a speeding cab driven by none other than Estelle Getty. Finally, with complete disregard for his personal safety, he talks a distraught suicide bomber out of blowing up himself and everyone around him. And he does all of this before he hops on a plane to Los Angeles, called west by an old friend, Sam (Al Ruscio), whose granddaughter has fallen victim to a serial killer. Continue reading “Deadly Force”

What a gloriously stupid movie. Future Kick is a textbook example of a shitty movie of the era. Everything about it is cheap, from its discount action star in Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, its discount Kirstie Alley in Meg Foster as the female lead, its bargain-basement special effects and sets, and its grainy film stock. There was even producer Roger Corman’s favorite method of saving money on a production: reusing footage from earlier films.

Once upon a time Corman addressed this oft-used technique. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that back when he started reusing footage and/or sets, there was no such thing as a home video market. He was making films that would show for a week or two at a drive-in, and that was the last anyone would ever see of them. No one would remember when a few months later a different flick would appear reusing footage from the earlier film. Sure, that’s a fine excuse for his Poe films, to which he was referring, but Future Kick was released in 1991, well after the home video market became a thing. Reused footage in this film comes from a duo of space flicks, Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World, and erotic slasher Stripped to Kill 2, which gives viewers a healthy dose of gratuitous nudity. Continue reading “Future Kick”