|
Written by nacho
|
A Greatsociety reader got me Laserblast after perusing my Amazon
Wishlist. I feel the need to mention that constantly because,
honestly, that's what life is about. I was happier to see an
anonymous Amazon package in my mailbox than a contract for a monthly
column at Harpers.
Laserblast is one of my childhood favorites because it stars
softcore beauty Cheryl Smith, has reptile aliens, plenty of California
desert action and it's just so fucking stupid it makes the hair on my
arms stand up.
Enter Billy Duncan, (played by Kim Milford who died 10 years later from
cocaine...I mean "heart failure") who spends the whole movie finding ways
to go around shirtless. If the movie was set at Ice Station
Zebra, he'd be in tight bell bottoms and no shirt. His smooth,
milk-fed torso ripples like a glistening, pale grub found in the bottom
of the plastic tub of potatoes that you left under the kitchen sink for
15 years.
His sweetheart is the granddaughter of a tinfoil-hat former army man,
Sandy, played by the lovely Cheryl Smith. And, by lovely, I mean
all the rotten gums, cracked lips and veiny white skin you can
imagine. Her anorexia so bad by 78 that she's covered in the
tell-tale fur of a career self abuser. Her life is so dark and
mysterious that she's notably absent from the "biographies" extra on
the DVD.
Cheryl Smith was a rock star hanger on who, throughout the 70's, found
herself as a Queen of the B films. After a brief career in an all
girl pre-punk band, her slow decline in Hollywood featured such stars
as Cocaine, Insane Sex Clubs and Heroin. In her off time, she
managed to pick up hepatitis, which is her official cause of death just
recently in 2002.
I was first introduced to Cheryl on Skinimax - Friday night often saw a repeat of the "adult version" of Cinderella, where Cheryl Smith was the owner of a snapping pussy. All singing and all dancing, Cinderella
deserves nothing but the finest DVD treatment some day. At least
get us a soundtrack! If only I was made of money... With the
help of her cross-dressing, homosexual fairy godfather, she and the
snapping pussy get into the prince's ball where she is the first woman
to make the prince cum and, thereby, saves the kingdom. You saw
plenty of Cheryl in that one but, by 78, she was getting a little rough
around the edges. No nudity for her in Laserblast, but the thing about 70's women in B movies...they might as well be nude.
Long, tall Cheryl can be spotted in Nice Dreams, Parasite, Vice Academy, Up in Smoke, Pom Pom Girls, Phantom of the Paradise, Caged Heat
and a number of long-since forgettable drive-in flicks. She was a
star of the court on indoor screens, x rated screens and drive in
cinema.
She died homeless, poverty stricken and at the mercy of friends who
gathered around for her final years to rescue her from the streets.
Hey! Enough about dead girls, I'm talking about Laserblast.
In this cult cinema gem, featured on Mystery Science Theater for one of
their more lackluster episodes, we get an old story: A loner from
a single family home, left to his own devices by his absentee mother,
struggles with his coming of age...despite the fact that he has a
functional car and Cheryl Smith as a girlfriend. The tagline says
"Billy was a kid who got pushed around, then he found power..."
That doesn't quite fly because he holds his own against two guys when
they try to rape Cheryl. So...he has power...but...anyway.
The laser from Laserblast is a huge, unwieldy arm-mounted weapon
left behind by reptile aliens. We open up with them exterminating
some poor kid who was turned into a corrupt zombie freak because he
used the gun too much. Billy is destined for that same path
because the reptile aliens leave the gun behind by accident. A
cameo by Roddy McDowell (whose name is spelled incorrectly in the
closing credits) helps support an otherwise oddball film. I'll
tell you right now, Laserblast is one of those
films. You know what I mean. A yawner when you're on normal
speed, but the original fucking B movie sci-fi freakout sexgang
operation watch it from the back seat of your car movie after six
MGDs. Or, in the case of this article, a bottle of Bacardi.
But I have a carefully developed tolerance.
Billy, poisoned by the alien gun, goes zombiefied when he gets
angry. He heads out to reap revenge against those who have
wronged him - his peers, his doctor, the local cops, and advertisements
for Star Wars.
The more he seeks revenge, the more detached he gets from his pathetic
life. Meanwhile, the reptile aliens are on hot on his
trail. Having left business unfinished, they were ordered to
return to Earth and retrieve the weapon (we can only infer that because
the long scenes where the animatronic reptiles talk to each other in
gibberish aren't subtitled). Eventually switching over to Mr.
Hyde full time, poor Billy goes on a wild lasergun rampage through his
tiny California town, blasting everyone in sight with little rhyme or
reason. While a special investigator from DC seeks the power,
Billy becomes drunk on death.
The disjointed battle between the government agents and zombie Billy is
awe inspiring only because it makes about as much sense as my
pill-popping aunt coming down on a Sunday morning. I am
especially enamored with the lingering camera shot on the stuntman in
full fireproof gear. That scene even silenced the MST3K boys.
A friend of mine had an often repeated joke in college that started
with, "So there I was, 30,000 feet and....(fill in the blank)."
Where's that come from? Here's a revelation for mutual
friends: Laserblast. You'll get to hear the whole
joke during the inexplicable and bizarre "hippie interlude" that the
audience enjoys between the climax and...the...second climax. The
second climax brings Billy onto the streets of his small town where he
destroys one car after another, blows away the above-mentioned hippie
at close range and performs a ritualistic, pagan dance around the
remains of a burning police car while synthesizer music soars.
Then, after the music has peaked, he blows up mailboxes and newsstands
and, finally, is "vapored to death" by the aliens sent to retrieve the
laser. (As an exciting plot hole, they don't actually retrieve
the gun. Just like with the other kid in the opening scene.)
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Nacho! You just ruined
the movie!" Trust me, I didn't. With something like Laserblast, it's all about watching
the movie, because there is no way to describe it. You'll see it
and you'll feel like an alien presence has entered your life, even
though you knew the outcome well in advance. I've probably seen
it several dozen times and, every time, I walk away with the sense that
something is just not quite right in the universe.
Watch out for: Old Bicentennial DC license plates (I have one in
my basement!), cop slaughter, two half tits (from the side), mood
rings, Star Wars, the laser gun sound stolen by V, really weird close up shots of people kissing, zombie murderdeathkill, and the famous "vapored to death" scene.
What's the bottle of Bacardi say? Laserblast gets full
marks in my book. It hits everything a shitty cult film should
hit: Girls, guns, monsters and the unnecessary murder of stupid
yet passively evil people. For something crawling horridly out of
the 1970's, it remains worthy of your 85 minutes.
|
|
|  |
|
Newsflash |
|
For the love of god, we've changed the front page. Stop emailing me! You now have to go to WWW.GREATSOCIETY.ORG. Just lose the "fpm" up there. These are the archives. |
|
|
|
Stories 
