Destroyer (1988)

Destroyer (1988)-*1\2

Directed by: Robert Kirk

Starring: Lyle Alzado, Deborah Foreman, Clayton Rohner, Pat Mahoney, David Kristin, Tobias Anderson, and Anthony Perkins



"3,000 volts couldn't kill him...It just gave him a buzz."









 Ivan Moser (Alzado) is an evil rapist/murderer who is in prison and about to receive the death penalty by electric chair. The authorities start the proceedings, but then a prison riot breaks out, diverting their attention. They assumed they fried Moser...but they were wrong! Meanwhile, a movie company begins shooting a film in the abandoned prison where Moser was. Seems like a smart idea. The movie is called “Death House Dolls” and is a women-in-prison flick. Edwards (Perkins) is the forever-frustrated director, and David Harris (Rohner) is the screenwriter and ideal 80’s coolguy. His girlfriend Susan Malone (Foreman) is also working on the film. Harris wants to capture the utter realism of the prison experience, despite the fact that he’s working on what seems to be a lightweight exploitation film, so he ends up butting heads with Warden Karsh (Mahoney) who was there on the night of the riot. But Harris also ends up getting some good info from local chef Fingers (Kristin). Will Moser, who has been presumably living at the prison for the past 18 months, we know not how or why, end up killing everyone in sight?

When we saw the VHS box cover for Destroyer, with a hulking, oiled-up Alzado brandishing a giant drill of some sort, we thought “how can we lose?” - maybe it’s our frame of mind, or maybe it’s due to lack of research on our part, but we thought Destroyer was an action movie. Hopefully one where Alzado “Destroys” the baddies. Not such a bad assumption, but an incorrect one. Destroyer instead is a dreary, inane slasher with problems as seemingly endless as the vast corridors a lot of the movie takes place in. What the movie has going for it are its individual characters. Alzado was great as the psycho killer who’s usually shirtless, Jim Turner is noteworthy as the techie on the film named Rewire, and David Kristin steals the movie as Fingers. The warden, the janitor Russell (Anderson), the young couple portrayed by Rohner and Foreman - who previously were together in April Fool’s Day (1986) - a far more entertaining horror film - together, pretty much any of the individual personages were good, it’s just that the writing and structure of the movie were slow, bleak, and not up to par. And nothing is worse than when they try to be funny. We blame the writers and director, not the actors.

The movie also falls into the typical trap of making the warden supposedly unlikable because he’s an authority figure, but the screenwriter dude supposedly sympathetic because he’s so cool and the warden’s not. Rohner, who has kind of a Johnny Depp meets Charlie Sheen kind of vibe, does indeed have awesome hair (there’s even a fairly substantial scene where he’s washing his hair) - but we were rooting for the warden. There’s also a pretty surprising lack of Alzado - like a lot of movie monsters, you don’t see a lot of him until the end of the movie. There should have been less Anthony Perkins directing the movie-within-a-movie and more Alzado on a rampage. While Deborah Foreman never looked closer to Belinda Carlisle than she does here, Alzado was never closer to John Matuszak than he is here. They have similar builds and facial hair. Maybe it’s a football thing.

As for the boxcover that so entranced us, it can proudly go into the “we pasted the main star’s head on someone else’s body and hoped no one would notice” file. As for the movie itself, it’s not action, and it’s not very horrifying. The individual characters are good, and there maybe a few decent lines here and there, but it’s unlikely too many people will come away very satisfied from Destroyer.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a review by our friend at The Unknown Movies! 

Bullet Down Under (1994)

Bullet Down Under (1994)-* *

AKA: Signal One

Directed by: Rob Stewart

Starring: Christopher Atkins and Mark "Jacko" Jackson











Martin Bullet. That’s really all we have to say. We could probably just end the review right now, because that name alone tells you more about Bullet Down Under than any long-winded treatise would. But lest you think we’re lazy, we shall continue. The aforementioned Bullet (Atkins), whose name takes the cake as far as way-too-on-the-nose action movie names are concerned (and we’ve heard ‘em all - or at least we thought we had - e.g. Anthony Strong, Jeff Powers, John Steele, Mike Justus,  Skylord Harris, etc.) is an L.A. cop who shoots some stereotypical 90’s homies and decides the best course of action after this supposedly tragic event is to hightail it to Australia and team up with hard-nosed, no-nonsense cop Moran (Jacko Jackson, whose name rivals Bullet’s, but his is real!). What then follows includes the fish-out-of-water Bullet and bull-in-a-china-shop Moran tearing up Australia fighting the baddies, who happen to be murderers and gangsters. Will Bullet’s next hit be number one with a bullet? Bullet over to Amazon and find out...

Way before Bullet to the Head (2012), but after Bullet In the Head (1990), we have Bullet Down Under (though to be fair, in most places this movie is called Signal One) - the original Bullet film. The whole outing is very TV-cop style, which isn’t surprising, as this is director Stewart’s only non-TV project. There are plenty of shootouts and car chases, but the plot has a ton of filler and lacks strong structure, as well as a threatening, centralized villain. 

Now that the negatives are out of the way, we can concentrate on Christopher Atkins’ leather jacket and sunglasses combo. Obviously he needed to look cool so he could compete with his own name. Bullet, not Atkins. Oddly, the movie doesn’t exploit the name Martin Bullet like it should have. Take Best of the Best 2 (1993) for example. They said the name Brakus like a million times. The name “Martin Bullet” should have been said more during the running time.

Contrasting with the baby-faced Atkins is the hulking, macho meathead Jacko Jackson. He’s not really known here in America, so after some digging we learned that he is an Australian Rules footballer. Thankfully, he’s also an Australian Rules actor. He seems to be the Australian parallel to our Brian Bosworth, and Atkins the parallel to our Mark Hamill. Pairing the two together certainly makes sense, especially when they’re investigating bootleg boomerang manufacturers (it sounds like a stereotype but this really occurs...we would imagine that is a big problem down there), and getting to the bottom of a very strange band called The Battered Brides that play with cardboard (?) instruments, kind of like the hard rock version of Information Society.

The U.S. DVD is of amazingly, embarrassingly poor quality (the audio is the worst we’ve ever heard - it sounds like everything is coming out of the worst drive-thru speaker you’ve ever ordered a burger through...at any moment you think Jacko Jackson is going to ask you if you want fries with that), and the video isn’t much better, with glaring errors such as Atkins walking out of a room twice (which was quite funny actually) - but we blame Arrow Video for this, not the filmmakers. There are plenty of amusing moments in Bullet Down Under (like the scenes in the classic weightlifting room) - but Arrow seems intent on not letting you fully enjoy them.

We were happy to get a chance to see this, and if you see it DIRT cheap somewhere like a gas station or Goodwill (where we found our copy), pick it up, but the inconsistency of the movie itself, as well as the poor presentation, will rightly scare off many potential viewers.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty