Moser el descuartizador

Lyle Alzado is...The Destroyer. The box to this movie claims it to be an action/thriller. Nope, it's a slasher flick. It's also an April Fool's Day reunion for Clayton Rohner and Debra Foreman. The late, great NFL monster Alzado is a psychotic rapist and murderer who is executed minutes before a prison riot breaks out. After the riots are over, the prison is forced to close and Alzado's body is never found. Years later, Foreman, Rohner (sporting one of his famous haircuts), and Anthony "Psycho" Perkins are filmmakers shooting a movie in the famed prison. It all makes for an odd little slasher entry. I wouldn't say Destroyer's great, but it does have its moments of hilarity. It's just fun to watch Alzado go to work on people with an over-sized jackhammer...or to hear Perkins say the words "shower scene."

For some reason every slasher from the late 80s has to have a quirky, wise-cracking killer, even though a mindless killing machine is usually a whole lot scarier. Our Freddie Krueger rip-off du jour (played by steroid-enhanced NFL star Lyle Alzado) ends every sentence with "bitch", laughs maniacally at his own non-jokes ("I just want to talk you...hahahahaha", did he forget the punchline?) and worst of all is on screen far too long. That whole trope with the villain trying to be funny works when there's actually some decent writing involved and the finale doesn't last forever ("Scream" would be an obvious example of doing it right). In this one the killer plays cat and mouse with the final girl for almost half an hour, the pacing of this movie is very weird. You have a very slow build-up, a somehow even slower third act, and somewhere in between everybody dies (mostly off-screen at that) in a span of ten minutes or so. There's one scene though that almost redeems the film, not too surprisingly it's the one scene that has an on-screen kill. It's the only scene that really warrants the coveted so bad it's good label, and I was hoping to see more of that. Unfortunately, the rest is just stale and generic.

Destroyer is a prime piece of forgettable 80's horror schlock. Lyle Alzado (YES!) stars as a brutal inmate who somehow survives his execution, Shocker style, and mysteriously disappears. Soon after, the prison closes and a while later, the place becomes the shooting location for a women-in-prison (WIP) film, directed by none other than a lively Anthony Perkins. (Yes, they do shoot a shower scene.) Of course, slasher horror hilarity ensues. Yeah, I knew what I was getting into…the cover shows a buff, gleaming Alzado holding a big jackhammer with a mounted scope! Memorable line: "Could you hang on a second, Officer Callahan? I gotta peepee."

This horror movie is very similar to others of the time such as Prison (1987), The Chair (1988) and The Horror Show (1989) but this is much more fun.

A movie titled "Death House Dollies" begins filming in what the crew believes to be a deserted prison unaware that a former inmate, Ivan Moser- who raped and murdered 23 men and women, had survied the electic chair years earlier and is still in the prison and he is very angry!

There's plenty of humour, decent kills and gore and there is an entertaining scene from the film within the film showing a group of girls fighting naked in a shower.

Stand out performances go to Lyle Alzado as the demented Ivan Moser and legendary actor Anthony Perkins as the direstor of the tashy "Death House Dollies".

In DESTROYER, a movie is being made in an abandoned prison, where a riot had killed dozens of guards and inmates a few months prior. Said riot had started after the execution of enormous, musclebound serial murderer, Ivan Moser (Lyle Alzado). Now, as the film crew gets rolling, the real, hideous deaths begin.

Has Moser returned from his gargantuan grave?

This is one of those cheap, cheeezey movies that would have played well on the drive-in circuit of its era. It takes a while for this one to get going, and even then it sort of drags along like a tranquilized turtle. By the time we actually get to see Mr. Alzado's character, it's half over. This is a shame, since he's the only dynamic aspect about this entire project!

On a positive note, Anthony Perkins is rather humorous as the Director of the ill-fated movie being made.

Extra Points For: The aforementioned Mr. Alzado, whose cackling maniac character almost saves this film from its own dullness. Almost...