Killer robots and global warming equal threats in 'Crash and Burn'

Crash and Burn (1990)
Starring: Paul Ganus, Megan Ward, Bill Moseley, Eva LaRue Callahan, Jack McGee and Ralph Waite
Director: Charles Band
Producers: Charles Band, Debra Dion and David DeCoteau
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The staff of and visitors to an isolated television station in the wastelands of a global-warming ravaged, heatstorm-swept American Southwest must survive the assault of a Synthoid, a human-like robot, programmed to kill all who oppose the tyrannical autocracy of world government Unicom.

"Crash and Burn" is a fast-paced, light-weight sci-fi yarn that combines a whole host of pulp-fiction/comic-booky/cyberpunky futuristic tropes--killer robots passing for humans, giant robots, a decaying society with a questionable moral fiber that is ruled by an oligarchical global government, and plucky rebels embodied by a cranky old man and a tough young girl--to great effect and moves swiftly through its action-packed story.


The characters in the film are all as shallow and cliched as can be expected--movies of this kind are usually more about the action and plot than the characters--but the actors all do decent jobs in their parts, with Megan Ward as the cute teenaged tech genius, Paul Ganus as the dashing hero, and Bill Moseley as the handyman sidekick with a secret doing particularly well in their respective parts.

The special effects are about par for a low-budget sci-fi film of this vintage--it's got decent matte shots, make-up, and stop-motion model effects sequences--and the violence is also standard action movie fare. Everything here is pleasantly average, which puts it well above the usual fare for a direct-to-video film from the early 1990s. (I continue to be surprised by how good these old Full Moon films are.)

Another thing that surprised me about this film is that it hasn't been reissued with fanfare and a marketing push or that Charles Band & Company hasn't thrown together a sequel for it.

The film's backdrop--a world ravaged by global warming and struggling under the thumb of an eeeeevil megacorp that wraps itself in right-wing and religious rhetoric to control the masses--seems like just the sort of thing that the modern environmental movement would lap up. It seems to me that a DVD containing this film, a newly made sequel and a marketing campaign with slogans along the lines of "They didn't listen to the warnings, nor pay heed to the inconvenient truth... now the world is paying the price!" would sell plenty of DVDs.

Then again, maybe that's why I'm not in product development or marketing.

Interesting premise marred by weak execution and characters

Wow. I can't believe it's been three years since I last posted a review here. Hopefully, it won't be that long until the next one!

The Day Time Ended (1979)
Starring: Jim Davis, Dorothy Malone, Marcy Lafferty, Natasha Ryan, Chris Mitchum, and Scott Kolden
Director: John Cardos
Producers: Charles Band, Steve Neill, and Wayne Schmidt
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A strange astronomical phenomena engulfs Earth in a magnetic solar storm, and throws the Williams family (the cast listed above) and their newly constructed, isolated home into a strange dimension where all time exists simultaneously.

"The Day Time Ended" has an interesting premise as its starting point, but the idea remains halfbaked and underexplained/exploited. The film meanders from scene to scene, with very little story motivation and even less logic. The characters barely interact with one another, and even when they do, you sometimes get the feeling that they are in different movies, talking past each other and delivering responses that barely make sense.

It's actually a shame, because Jim Davis and Marcy Lafferty in particular give decent performances. If their characters were more interesting and the story a little more substantial and coherent, they might have been able to save this movie. As it is, however, all we have is a drab and dull filler that is barely worth sitting through. It's not even bad enough to be entertaining in a "bad movie" sense.

The highlight of the film are the goofy claymation aliens (or dinosaurs or mutants or whatever the heck they are) that bedevil the family at roughly the halfway point of the movie. But, like everything else in the film, including some sort of evil flying robot--that can teleport through structural walls but has to use a laser in an attempt to get through a bedroom door--nothing much comes of them.

"The Day Time Ended" can be found in several different multi-movie packs; I came across it in the 50-movie Sci-Fi Invasion set. It's inoffensive filler in such a case, but it's not a film to go out of your way for and you can safely safe it for last in whatever set it's part of.

'Shrieker' is nothing to shout about

Shrieker (aka "Shriek") (1998)
Starring: Tanya Dempsey, Jamie Gannon, Parry Allen, Roger Crowe, Alison Cuffe and Jenya Lano
Director: Victoria Sloan (aka David DeCotaeu)
Producers: Kirk Edward Hansen and Charles Band
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

College students squatting in a hospital that's been abandoned for over 50 years come under attack when one among them summons an extra-dimensional horror known as the Shrieker. Five must die so it's summoner can control it. Will mathmatics Freshman Clark (Dempsey) learn the secrets of the Shrieker in time to save herself and her "roommates"?


"Shrieker" is a straight-forward monster film with a "Ten Little Indians"-style who-dunnit element thrown in. It's so straight-forward that it almost feels like an outline of a movie instead of a full-fledged one. It's short on character development, short on logic, and short on suspense, because there's not enough time to include that sort of materal in its very brief running time of just over an hour.

The fact that it's so short is probably the best thing I can say about "Shrieker". The director had enough sense not to pad his film with a bunch of pointless "mood shots" or never-ending establishing shots. Although I probably wouldn't have been too annoyed if there had been a little gratioutous nudity to pad the film, particularly since Alison Cuffe and Jenya Layno at one point both wear outfits that could have been even skimpier.

In that vein, I should mention that "Shrieker" features a cast that seems to have been cast more for their good looks than their acting abilities, but with the breakneck pace at which the film unfolds, there's barely time to notice anything about the cast other than their good looks. (Everyone gives an adequate performance for a low-budget, direct-to-DVD film... no one embarrasses themselves but no one does a remarkable job, either.)

However, I would have liked to have seen SOME development of the creature in the movie, at least as far as a better explanation of the how, who and why of it being summoned. It's a cool looking beastie--one of the better efforts during the late 1990s as Full Moon began its decline--but it needed more of a backstory.

"Shrieker" isn't the worst film in the Full Moon catalogue, but it's far from the best.