A Brilliant Conflict

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

I guess I love this bad film because I caught it on its' initial release in a drive-in on a hot summer night in 1978, well provisioned with a bag of Colombian Gold Buds and a couple bottles of Boone's Farm. We'd seen a still of the stop-motion animation scene in Starlog Magazine, and were quite curious. Wonderfully dreadful and delirious, the animated sequence at the beginning of the film is really the only thing this film had to recommend it. David Carradine's "Deathsport" was worse than this, as I recall, but it's not as good as Marjoe Gortner's "Starcrash"...

The really bad thing about this movie is the amount of time wasting filler.More than half of this is just people walking or driving with no dialogue or action. The set up is great.A weird looking alien in a Star Trek uniform is stumbling through the desert with a giant laser gun.A space ships flies in and two E.T. style aliens get out with a very small gun.They turn the guy into dust and leave.But the guy's giant laser gun and weird necklace survive somehow.Then they spend way too much time trying to get us to feel sympathy for the main character.He's a rich kid with a hot girlfriend but his mommy doesn't have time for him.The cops hassle him and the other kids make fun of him so he goes to the desert and finds the laser gun and starts blowing up stuff.Then we see that the aliens can see he found the gun and they know they have to come back and stop him.But it's not even the aliens that were there, it was their superior.So they left cameras there and left that laser and only their superior can watch the cameras?It doesn't make any sense and they replay the entire scene of the kid finding gun.This could have been a great short but it's a not so great full length.

This is a film that was featured on the cult show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Oftentimes, being on this show is the first time I will have ever seen a film, but not in this case. No, I saw this one as a child numerous times as it used to come on one of those obscure channels that would show old science fiction films like this and Godzilla. I watched this one and enjoyed it as a kid, because it has a laser in it! It also had aliens and it was very short. Well, one really didn't get the advantage of the brevity as they stretched this thing out over a two hour span. A film, that was obviously inspired by Star Wars to the extent it even feels the need to blast its creator in the form of a sign being blown away. Not all bad, but it is kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things as you have characters that are obviously just there to pad the film, you have an actor of some note playing a bit part to lend a bit of credibility and you have an incredibly irritating Eddie Deezen character. So this film most certainly did deserve some riffing, but you have to admit, the title does say it all! The story has an alien wandering the desert where he is gunned down by two aliens who are stop motion. They do not look overall great, but their eyes move rather well. Well these two fly off leaving the alien's laser in the desert. We then meet Billy whose mom likes going on vacation, the local law harasses him and two dweebs try to show him up. He soon finds the laser and the means to operate it, but using it seems to have adverse side effects on our 'hero'. He soon goes to a birthday party with his girlfriend where the girl whose birthday it is has a sad speech about how she only has friends because of her pool. What does this have to do with anything? Well, not a whole lot in the long run. Just padding. Well, Billy is soon getting revenge on those that have wronged him and he may or may not be unstoppable and the aliens have to do a u-turn in space, because they didn't get the laser the last time.This is one of my favorite MST3K episodes from a riffing standpoint. This film is bad, but not so bad that it is unbearable to watch. It is a fun little film for the most part so it makes it fun listening to them make fun of it. This was the last episode of the show on Comedy Central though, so none of the bumps had anything to do with the film which is a bit sad. I liked the bumps, but I would have loved to have seen one skit done using it as the inspiration, such as having the aliens from the movie appear or something. Still, the movie itself was great and the jokes fast and furious! So in the end a bad film, but not one that you cannot watch. The film was produced by Charles Band and that explains a lot. For those who do not know, he did the Full Moon Studio films and lets face it, all of those films were brief and a lot of them were pointless. Granted, some of them were pretty good too and when they are bad, they usually still are fun to watch. This one is no exception, though this one is not under the Full Moon banner yet. Just a movie where they saw a movie and then thought, let's have a kid find a laser and blast stuff! What will we call it? Laserblast! Sounds good to me!

I am one of those few who liked this movie. I was always reluctant to get this on DVD, but during a Full Moon Valentine's Day Sale, I bought it. A solid little cult sci-fi film with some decent special effects. I liked the development of Billy and how he slowly is possessed and driven completely mad. My only gripe with the movie has to do with the storytelling. How did the original alien in the beginning get on earth and why? Also, what was the deal with that alien being wanted from the other space aliens? That is never explained, however, it's easy to not think about it.Too many people take movies seriously these days. Time for people to lighten up and realize that movies don't have to be perfect in order to be fun. Glad Billy blows up a billboard with "Star Wars" on it! Take that Star Wars nerds!