Who payed the critics

The greatest movie ever made..!

Strong and Moving!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

PEACEMAKER is a not-bad B-movie slice of pure hokum from director Kevin Tenney, the man who brought us NIGHT OF THE DEMONS and WITCHBOARD. The plot is heavily derived from THE TERMINATOR and sees a woman caught between two men who are aliens masquerading as humans. One of them's a cop, one's a killer, and she must work out which is which.It's a mixed bag of a movie in terms of execution but the mystery angle of the plot keeps it going, just about. There's plenty of violent action here, carried out reasonably well on a low budget, and a sense of momentum which means that the narrative is never boring despite the sometimes repetitive nature of the scenes. Cast-wise, the only actor to really shines is the always-fun Robert Forster, although Robert Davi also shows up in support as a cop.

First of all, let me proclaim my bias: I am the President and CEO of the Kevin Tenney Fan Club, therefore I enjoy his work. Granted, the man has never made a blockbuster, but his work is far more entertaining than anything Woody Allen or Michael Bay could ever dream of making. That being said, I enjoyed this flick but not quite as much as I enjoyed Pinnochio's Revenge or Witchboard.In this film we have a doctor (Hilary Shepard) torn between two aliens, both claiming to be police officers from another planet. Hilary has a hard time trusting the aliens in human form since they are both tricky and each have the same story - flipping roles to confuse Ms. Shepard. Hilary changes her allegiance to the men on several occasions throughout the film, but you really can't blame her. Although this isn't Tenney's finest film, it is much better than other sci-fi films out there.VIOLENCE: $$$$ (I swear, this film employed more stunt men than any other film in the history of cinema. There are numerous car chase scenes, which I don't usually enjoy, but Kevin makes them great, as well as several explosions. SInce the aliens can regenerate, Tenney shoots Robert Forster and Lance Edwards about a thousand times each).NUDITY: $$ (Hilary Shepard removes a robe and steps into the shower with one of the aliens and then makes love to him. Tenney's love scenes are never gratuitous. You hardly see any of the forbidden flesh).STORY: $$$ (Although the main premise is a recycled one, Tenney is a master story-teller with a superior knack for writing one-liners. Most of the jokes are spoken through Hilary Shepard's character since the aliens don't have jokes and pranks on their planet. Unlike most writers, Tenney doesn't write females as the helpless, screaming, wait-for-the-man-to-save-me characters. He gives his female characters substance).ACTING: $$$ (The acting is alright. I've always been a fan of the Dos Roberts - Forster and Davi. Robert Davi's role isn't very substantial but he is solid in it. Lance Edwards got on my nerves with his alien accent and his acting is a tad stiff. Hilary Shepard proves to have a knack at delivery one-liners. She could be described as a female Bruce Campbell. She does a wonderful job with Tenney's dialogue).

Due to budgetary limitations, this movie isn't quite up to the same standard as similar films from the Eighties/early Nineties that it was clearly influenced by (for example, THE HIDDEN, DARK ANGEL, and THE TERMINATOR). The use of familiar stock footage from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS to portray the alien's arrival on Earth is particularly disappointing. However, despite these problems, PEACEMAKER is still a highly entertaining sci-fi/action hybrid that has been undeservedly overlooked and is ripe for rediscovery. It's also one of the few films in which the gorgeous and talented B movie actress Hilary Shepard was given a leading role.

As a director, Kevin Tenney's body of work is mixed at best. But as a writer it's clear that he has no problem stealing the plots of other movies. This is a blatant ripoff of a 1987 movie called The Hidden, which had the same storyline but much better action sequences. His later film, Endangered Species, is clearly a ripoff of Terminator. Witchtrap ripped off The Haunting and Hell House and his own Witchboard, which featured an equally cheesy villain. The opening set-up of the one Night of the Demons script he wrote (#3) was his attempt to steal Quentin Tarentino's crime action thunder, mixed with his usual rehash of plot points from the original film in the series. With all the struggling young writers out there trying to make a buck, you'd think that Tenney would throw away his keyboard and hunt for original material. Looking over his credits on this site, his best films were written by other people.