Laserblast

1978 junk drawer science fiction

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Space turtles battle some guy on earth. They kill him and fly off to their turtle planet, but they leave his death ray (aka Laserblaster) behind. Enter Billy Duncan, a guy with a van. Billy's been bullied, has been told by his girlfriend's dad to stay away, and has the police harrassing him. He stumbles upon the alien weapon while strolling in the desert, and laserblasting ensues. However, the crystal that makes this weapon function unfortunately also starts to mutate him into a fanged, twitching zombie mutant. And the turtles are coming back for their gun! Oh, snap!

First, the good: the space turtles are stop-animated with these squiggly little baby voices, and they're pretty cool. The rest of this movie is bad and ugly. There's some miscasting. The lead isn't the bullied type, and one of the bullies is your typical nerd which makes that whole subplot completely implausible. Billy's girlfriend's dad is crazy in a very strange, almost intense way that seems unnatural. Roddy McDowall is also in this. He must have lost a bet as he looks completely out of place as a doctor. His name is also mispelled in the closing credits. The movie is so clumsily paced with some scenes finishing and then lingering for a few seconds, almost as if the director had yelled, "Cut!" and nobody could figure out how to turn off the camera. Aside from the aliens, the special effects are laughable. Most of the film's budget must have been spent on explosions. Lots of things, mostly cars, explode in this movie, and each explosion is shown from four camera angles. The filmmakers sure were proud of their explosions! There's a lot of dopeyness in Laserblast that makes it worth the time. Watching the protagonist twitch around as he looks for things to blow up is fun. Actually, the most glorious part of the entire movie might be when he finds the gun and runs around the desert pretending to shoot it while making "Pow pow pow" sounds like he's six years old. Great stuff. At one point, he blows up a pinball machine and a mailbox for no reason, and later he shoots at a billboard that says nothing but "Star Wars." A guy named Michael Bryar plays a hippie guy who picks Billy up. Wasted, he also twitches around, sort of like a cross between Torgo and Michael J. Fox. I hoped I could see other Michael Bryar movies, but this is his only one. It's almost like he said to himself, "You know. I pretty much hit perfection with my role as 'Hippie Guy Who Picks Up Hitchhiker,' and I want to go out on top!" and then retired a legend. Good for him, but the world was robbed. Another note: This is one of those B-movies without any extras at all. Every person on the screen is an actual character which makes it look like they live in a town with six people. It's weird.