Il giorno della crisalide

Took a chance watching this one and it paid off at first. Went in blind and I see the names Wings Hauser, Bo Hopkins and George Kennedy - legends! An incredibly bad rip-off of The Terminator's title card is swiftly followed by a hillbilly being killed by a scientist with a laser gun. Oh, it's gametime.

Too bad the opening scene might've been the best one.. So evil government dudes (who look like a bunch of plumbers) taint the water supply of a small town with a chemical that induces psychotic rage and turns you into a green zombie. All this is part of an experiment of some kind that is never explained. The baddies shut down all communication in-or-out, trapping the citizens in for the battle royale.

The main scientist bad guy looks like a Col. Sanders / Doc Brown hybrid who's suffering from radiation sickness. He has no characterization besides being a (literal) mustache twirling villian... only a cool laser gun and sunglasses. The good guys are an unlikeable lawyer, his snotty wife, a renegade drifter, the town sheriff and the sheriff's deputy. They also serve almost no purpose, just props running around from shootout to shootout.

The experience is saved by B-Movie goodness all around: Horribly outdated 80s future tech and SFX, bad dialogue being delivered poorly, tons of gratuitous violence and inexplicable explosions. The plot doesn't matter and all the characters are uninteresting, but luckily it moves quick enough to offset boredom. After a few minutes of watching paint dry you'll be treated to either some delightful overacting, horrific violence, or one of the seemingly hundreds of van explosions in this movie.

It's funny that Hollywood go-to Hans Zimmer did the score here. It helps the movie, but is dated, and doesn't stand above it much in quality. It also is very Terminator inspired, essentially mirroring it at times.

By the end it falls off the rails and devolves completely into a bad western (The weird government CIA scientist dudes all decide to ride horseback for no reason!). There's also a very boring and pointless helicopter chase tacked on after the plot concludes. So all in all it's nothing special, but worth checking out for the right crowd, especially all the George Kennedy fans out there

On the surface, a very bad action adventure film. But, if not taken too seriously, it's a lot of fun. When a mad scientist poisons the water supply of a small Utah town, it's up to a drifter, a celebrity lawyer and two local cops to bring order to a town where the the citizens are now possessed by rage and violence. The last half hour reveals the film for what it truly is: a modern day western, as the good guys mount up to trail the bad guys for a showdown. Filmed with style on a small budget, featuring a score by Hans Zimmer of all people, the story only fails in the last ten minutes where the director just seemed to run out of story.

This is possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. I could talk about everything from the bad acting to the non-sensical plot, but it'd be a waste of time. You only need to watch the first half-hour of the film to know it really sucks. It doesn't even have any camp value to it! This film was so bad, it hurt my feelings!

B-movies typically come in two categories: Unwatchable Garbage and Entertaining Garbage. This one falls in the latter category. It's got the goods: Over-the-top action and violence, snappy corny dialogue, fun performances, and a darkly humorous tone. Aside from a couple of scenes that drag on a little too long, It's quickly paced. Once things get going, they keep going, so it never really feels boring.

No pun intended - this feels like ... I have not seen many Mastorakis movies ... but he is quite infamous. So I expected this to be really over the top. I mean the stabbing incident (I'll call it that) and some other things go an extra mile .. so for people who are sensitive or are way more sensible ... they may feel differently. But everyone else may not be too impressed in the end.

All that said, the story is quite out there (no pun intended). The effects are quite well done too - again not for the faint of heart of course. I almost included this to my Shocktober challenge, but had too many to watch anyway. Some good actors and the one thing that surprised me the most: Hans Zimmer made music for this ... well why not?