Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Unwatchable Week rolls on with one of our periodic substitutions. The actual #49 movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list I’ve been working from all along is the 1989 Bo Derek sex comedy Ghosts Can’t Do It. Oh, how I wish I could find this movie, but there doesn’t appear to be any trace of its existence left on earth besides a handful of reviews and a four-second YouTube clip of Derek in a wet t-shirt. This is a tragedy that any self-respecting film preservationists should devote all the resources at their disposal toward rectifying. After all, we’re talking about a movie that swept the Razzies, taking home Worst Picture, Worst Actress (Derek) and Worst Director (John Derek). I demand a fully restored Criterion Collection edition by year’s end, but in the meantime, we have to find a replacement for today’s Unwatchable installment. As is my policy, I have consulted the current version of the IMDb Bottom 100 list and selected the first entry that does not also appear on my version of the list.
That turned out to be Laserblast, an early effort from producer Charles Band, who was essentially the Roger Corman of the VHS era. Glancing over his filmography, I see that Band has spent much more of his career exploring our primal fear of dolls and puppets than I would have guessed, although these days he’s turned his attention to the largely untapped “scary gingerbread men” genre. In 1978, however, aliens were all the rage…and Band and his first-(and only-)time director Michael Rae were not about to buck the trend.
Even if, like me, you have a soft spot for cheesy ‘70s sci-fi, you’ll be hard-pressed to extract much entertainment value from Laserblast. The fun begins with a couple of Play-Doh aliens vaporizing a rather vampiric-looking fellow wielding a laser cannon. After this brief but oh-so-tantalizing burst of sci-fi action, Laserblast turns into a horny teenager movie, as young Billy Duncan (Kim Milford) wakes from a dream only to find his slutty mother is off to Acapulco again. The lonely boy tries to visit his girlfriend Kathy, but her crazy grandpa (Keenan Wynn) who thinks he’s still in World War II chases him off. Billy wanders out to the desert, where he finds the abandoned laser cannon. This completely turns his day around, as you can imagine. He starts blasting cacti and sand dunes as any of us would, little realizing the effect this alien artifact is having on him.
Exposure to the weapon turns Billy’s skin an unhealthy shade of green, and he develops some sort of seeping chest wound that calls for a cameo from Roddy McDowell as the town sawbones. I’m sure Mr. McDowell was just happy to be in a cheesy ‘70s sci-fi movie that didn’t require him to sit in a makeup chair for seven hours, but he doesn’t bring a whole lot to the party. Billy continues to mutate, much to the dismay of Kathy, the local law enforcement, an investigating government agent, and Billy’s high school tormenters (including cinematic uber-nerd Eddie Deezen in his motion picture debut).
The dramatic conclusion finds Billy hitching a ride with a hippie driving a VW bus and using his trusty laser cannon to blow up a Star Wars billboard. (Now that’s chutzpah.) His rampage is cut short when the Play-Doh aliens finally catch up and give him a taste of his own medicine. I’ll say this much for the aliens: they may be cheaply made, but at least they have personality, which is more than I can say for Billy or any other human in the movie. Otherwise, Laserblast has little to offer besides periodic explosions and a chubby girl in a bikini eating cake. I know some of you are into that sort of thing.
Previously on Unwatchable:
50. Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
51. Simon Sez
52. In the Mix
53. Baby Geniuses
54. Meatballs 4
