Cheesy straight to VHS films were plentiful in the eighties. This one from low budget king Fred Olen Ray fits right into that category.
Fresh from her stint on televisions The Fall Guy is Heather Thomas as a tough biker babe. Surprisingly her boyfriend is the nerdy scientist type. It’s Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs. It seems that he is working on a prototype motorcycle loaded down with missiles for military use. Evil forces are lurking.
When boyfriend Combs is murdered, Thomas is left with the knowledge of his creation and quickly learns that not everyone is who they seem.
Hammer Films queen Martine Beswick and Robert Quarry of Count Yorga fame turn up as Government agents hoping to relieve Thomas of the cycle. She’s not ready to hand over anything. Not until she talks to ……….. would you believe Troy Donahue?
Pulling the strings in the background is Oscar winner Martin Landau. He’s an arms dealer who wants results and he isn’t happy with the way Dar Robinson has been handling the situation. Robinson was one of Hollywood’s premier stuntman at this time before his untimely death the year before this titles release.
It takes a twist in character to finally bring Thomas to her knees allowing Landau the opportunity to reason with her and take possession of the super cycle. She passes and so the torture scene begins. Not to worry because help is on the way via our aging Hammer queen.
This sets off a car chase which features a solid crash done the old fashioned way. Using real cars. Wake up Hollywood! It’s all going to come to a predictable close with a couple surprises along the way. Still, you’ll probably see them coming.
During the VHS era, director Ray put out a fair amount of films and seemed to land an abundance of aging stars and well known faces to fill out the cast lists of his low budget efforts. See Armed Response for another fine example.
Landau was in a number of B films through out the video age before being brought back to prominence by Tim Burton portraying Bela Lugosi to great acclaim in Ed Wood.
Beswick, Quarry and Combs are of course familiar faces to horror film experts and turning up here as well is Huntz Hall of The Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys fame in a rather embarrassing cameo.
I picked this up in a fine budget pack from Shout Factory which gives us four titles from the VHS era.
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