Laserblast

Rating:
Summary: Not Really Much of a Blast
Review: Two extraterrestrials are in pursuit of another in the Arizona desert, and when they catch up to "him," they disintegrate all but the other's gun-like weapon. They seem uninterested in the weapon, however, and leave it behind.

Enter young Billy, stereotypical teenage pariah. In an effort to escape his troubles for awhile, Billy wanders into said desert and--you guessed it!--stumbles across the powerful weapon left behind by the murdered extraterrestrial. It isn't long, of course, before he learns how to successfully wield and fire this laser-like weapon. Then, bent on meting out his revenge to those who shun him, the misguided youngster takes the weapon back to town and proceeds to blast just about everything in sight. There is a price, however, for joining the intergalactic NRA: When Billy uses the weapon, it temporarily makes his skin greenish and his teeth pointy and sharp. And worse, these changes seem to be edging more and more towards permanency each time the weapon is used.

Meanwhile, back at the cosmic ranch, the aliens that own the weapon--probably kin to the murdered bloke--are aware of Billy's activities, and they are on their way to Earth to reclaim their property. Will Billy finally overcome the addictive allure of the laser weapon, or will he permanently mutate into his demonic, laser-wielding alter ego? Will the aliens get there in time to save Billy, or will they be forced to commit euthanasia and put Billy the Mutant out of his misery?

Of all of the pieces of cinematic flotsam that were churned up in the wake of the highly successful (and much, much better) STAR WARS (1977), 1978's LASERBLAST is truly among the worst. The film suffers from the lack of a coherent and comprehensible plot, and the bit of story that is there is thin, cliché, and amounts to little more than a cheap teen empowerment fantasy. Michael Rae's direction is erratic at best, non-existent at worst, and this only adds to the confusion of the lousy plot. Terry Bowen's cinematography makes everything look abysmally flat and washed-out, and most of the acting is as flat as the cinematography. The few exceptions to the latter are the performances of the beautiful Cheryl Smith, who plays Billy's girlfriend; venerable and longtime character actor Keenan Wynn, who has a minor role here as a military type; and master thespian (and genre regular) Roddy McDowall, who appears here in a bit part as a physician. Alas, the skills of these talented actors are wasted here, though, since their performances get lost within the muck and mire that is LASERBLAST.

There are a few bright spots in the production values of this dull piece of celluloid. While not quite on a level with the work of master animator Ray Harryhausen, Dave Allen's stop-motion animation of the extraterrestrials is really pretty cool. Fortunately, Allen would go on to do FX work for better films like 1981's THE HOWLING and 1989's HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, to name but a few. Also very cool is the alien spaceship in LASERBLAST. The model was designed and built by Greg Jein, who also worked the on the models for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and STAR WARS (1977) at about the same time. Jein has gone on to do miniature and FX work for both the theatrical and television incarnations of STAR TREK, as well as for other notable films and TV shows.

In spite of the few minor highlights in LASERBLAST, the film is best avoided by serious filmgoers who prefer flicks with quality writing, talented actors, and skilled filmmakers. The DVD from Full Moon does offer a few bonus features. One is a behind-the-scenes featurette; the other is a very enjoyable supplemental featurette with tons of campy trailers for even cheesier films. Indeed, this bonus material is much more entertaining than the feature film. But unless you're really interested in what happens on the set of an awful film, or unless you're a collector of kooky film trailers, these extras are hardly incentive to purchase the disc.

Rating:
Summary: A good SciFi movie for its time
Review: When I was a kid back around 1980 or so, I got my mom to drop my brother and I off at a SciFi/ComicBook convention in Austin for the afternoon. After browsing for a while we went to a conference room where they were screening movies. My brother and I sat down and watched LaserBlast that afternoon, and it was a seminal moment in my life as a scifi fan.
Many of the reviews here poke fun at how campy this movie is, but you have to take into account the time when this movie was released. Granted, Star Wars did come out at roughly the same time as this movie, and people might be tempted to compare this movie to Star Wars, but that would be a mistake. Star Wars would forever change the way scifi films would be made from that point on, but not all movies back in the late 70's had Star Wars' budget or resources; Star Wars was in another league and had the benefit of George Lucas and Industrial Light and Magic.
This movie was probably the last movie of its era, a movie that came from the pre-Star Wars mold. The early scifi influences are plain to see here: the opening sequence in the Arizona desert has the old Star Trek wind effect in the background, and the aliens are filmed in classic stop motion animation ala Ray Harryhausen.
There are a lot of other cool tidbits in this film: the heavy laser rifle that fits over the arm and allows for cool crouching poses, the crystal necklace that allows the gun to fire and controls the mind of whoever wears it, the numerous explosions filmed from multiple angles, the way the aliens wave their hands over the controls of their ship to make it turn around, the "men in black" character (years before MIB became popular), and even the cast. You'll recognize a lot of faces in this film that later went on appear in other movies: the geek Froggy (the awesome Eddie Deezen), the doctor (Roddy McDowell), the MIB agent (Gianni Russo), the fat bearded cop (Dennis Burkley), and of course the main character (Kim Milford).
When you watch this movie don't compare it to modern-day big budget scifi, but rather look at it as a nostalgic blast from the past with - yes - some great camp value.