LASERBLAST (1978)

DIRECTED by Michael Rae

SCREENPLAY by Frank Ray Pirrilli & Franne Schacht

STARRING  - Kim Milford as Billy Duncan,  Cheryl Smith as Kathy Farley, Gianni Russo as Tony Craig,  Roddy McDowall as Dr. Melon,  Keenan Wynn as Colonel Farley,  Dennis Burkley as Deputy Chief Ungar,  Barry Cutler as Deputy Jesse Jeep,  Mike Bobenko as Chuck Boran,  Eddie Deezen as Froggy,  Ron Masak as Sherrif,  Steve Neil as Alien.

PLOT - Billy Duncan is a normal teenager with normal teenage problems - his career minded mum neglects him, his girlfriend Kathy's grandfather hates him, the local police are on his back for driving offences and he struggles to make friends in the backwater desert town where he lives.

Until one day whilst walking in the local desert Billy finds a strange alien gun and the amulet which controls it. The gun which fires deadly lasers, gives Billy the power over others he so desperately craves and acts as an outlet for his seething resentment at everything he sees around him.

Falling under the alien gun's malign influence, Billy embarks on a laser fuelled rampage of destruction. Little does Billy know that the gun is starting to mutate him on a physical level and that the gun's alien owners have returned to Earth looking to reclaim thier property...

DIALOUGE  - Kathy  - '' Gee Billy...why can't you be more ordinary ?"

PERFORMANCES  - Kim Milford gives a suitably stilted performance as Billy. At first it comes across that he's not a very good actor - he mumbles and speaks in a fairly deadpan sort of way but as the story progresses you start to realise that this is intentional. 

Billy is a social misfit - he's misunderstood, under appreciated by everyone around him and socially awkward. In short - Billy is just the right sort of person with just the right sort of simmering bitterness that allows him to become a thrall to the mysterious alien weapon. In all honesty he's the type of person you could imagine snapping and going on a gun toting rampage with a normal common or garden Earth weapon, it's just that he happens to find the alien gun before he gets the chance, either way this chap was going to "go postal" eventually.

The only bright spot in Billy's miserable life is his girlfriend Kathy (Cheryl Smith giving a soppy wet blanket of a performance), everyone else just shits on him from a great height including his Mum, Kathy's senile grandfather, the two bored (and stoned) small town Deputys and the town's local bullys - Chuck and Froggy.

It's got to be said that your life's on a clear hiding to nothing if you find yourself being bullied by these two losers, I mean, just look at them...

In any other film these two would be the ones being picked on. Not in this movie.

There's not a lot to say about the rest of the cast, all the characters are pretty two dimensional and no-one gets that much to do. Gianni Russo turns up as Tony Craig, an FBI man investigating reports of alien sightings in the desert. Tony seems to be some kind of cross between Dirty Harry (Russo looks and dresses similar to Clint Eastwood in his iconic role but doesn't have an ounce of the same screen presence) and a proto Fox Mulder. 

Its really hard to tell if Russo is giving a good performance or not as half the lines of dialogue he speaks are either drowned out by bad sound editing or are missing entirely (theres literally moments where you see his lips move, he's clearly speaking but theres no sound coming out). The copy of this film that I watched was a ropey old VHS rip on YouTube, so these sound cut-outs may be due to that and that alone...or maybe not. Its that kind of movie...

The only well known actor appearing in this movie is Roddy McDowall playing the town's doctor- the ridiculously named Dr. Melon. Quite what a respected character actor like McDowall is doing appearing in this film I have no idea - maybe his boiler was broken and he needed some spare cash to fix it. Needless to say he's only in it for about two minutes before he gets promptly "laserblasted" to death.

SFX  - The highlight of the film is the aliens themselves who are rendered via some excellent old school stop motion animation.

They look like Tortoises minus thier shells and the animation is good enough to give them an expressive physical presence. It's so good in fact that it could be argued that these little fellows actually give a much better performance than some of the human actors in this movie.

They just have bags of charm.

Billy gets some pretty decent makeup work when he starts to mutate.

Other than that its typically cheesy "laser fx" mixed with some pretty impressive pyrotechnics. Things literally get blown up left, right and center in this film and the explosions are always big, loud and impressive.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Town sleazebags Chuck and Froggy try to rape Kathy at a pool party at one point. Billy fights them off with a handy Tennis raquet before the two then hand his arse to him and give him a kicking. Kathy then weakly flails the Tennis raquet at them and they back off. A truly bizarre scene.

After that Billy goes on his laser death rampage. His modus operandi seems to be waiting until characters who have pissed him off are driving in thier cars. Billy then shoots the cars with his laser gun and they blow up spectacularly. Literally every single time Billy shoots a car it blows up not once. Not twice. Not three times. But FOUR TIMES IN SUCCESION !!! They obviously filmed the same explosions from four different angles and (this being a B-movie) didn't want to waste a single shot, so we get to see every single car blow itself to smithereens four times.

Dr Melon and Chuck and Froggy all die in this OTT manner. Billy also shoots a random trucker in the chest with the laser but for some reason he doesn't blow up, he just looks shocked and falls over like he's about to have a crafty power nap instead. A missed opportunity for a shower of gore and offal methinks.

Finally, Billy gets snippered from a rooftop by one of the Tortoise aliens.

Billy dies in Kathy's arms whilst the confused seeming Tony looks on (whilst no doubt delivering a big speech which nobody can hear). End of movie.

RATING  - Laserblast is never going to win any prizes for "best film ever made" but it does have lots of goofy charm.

There's some really funny moments where the movie seems to take regular potshots at the (then recent) original Star Wars film. At one point a character is described by a redneck cop as being "crazy" because he's watched Star Wars five times. At another point Billy blows up an advertising billboard promoting Star Wars...

I've no idea what Star Wars did to offend the makers of this film so much, but its definitely amusing to watch them take the piss so ruthlessly.

All in all, this is a good movie to switch your brain off to after a long day. Sit back, relax and watch Billy run around like a monkey blowing shit up with a big laser gun. It's as simple, ridiculous and fun as that. Sometimes thats all you need.

3 and a half Tortoise warriors out of 5.

ART -

There was also a comic adaptation of this film released by VHS Comics in the early 2020's. Below is some art from that series.

Good grief, they've upped the gore considerably from what you get in the film.