Circuit mortel

My review was written in July 1988 after watching the movie on New Star video cassette.

"Death Chaser" is an underachieving action picture, released last month domestically direct-to-video. It's too close to an amateur effort for comfort.

William Zipp toplines as Steven Chase ("Chase" was pic's shooting title), an innocent bystander out jogging with his sister (Christine Cromwell) when she's killed by stray gunfire. A dying man gives Chase his gun, declares "You're it", and the chase begins.

It seems an evil corporation head known as the chairman (C. T. Collins) is taging the dry run of an elaborate, letha game in which various teams hunt each other in an urban landscape, with burly Paul Smith as gamemaster. Premise resembles John Brunner's sci-fi novel "The Squares of the City" (in which real-life people and events are manipulated by higher ups like chess pieces), but without the sci-fi.

Pic plays as one long chase, with Smith popping up constantly as deus ex machina. The gun Chase receives is the key to the mystery, but the trick ending is merely confusing.

Helmer David A. Prior overdoes the gimmick of exploding blood-packs on victims and action footage is on the cheapjack side. Extremely poor post-synching of the dialog makes it tough to watch, and pretty much sabotages the performances, particularly that of the pretty heroine Bainbridge Scott. Action helmer Jack Starrett dons his actor's cap to co-star as a corrupt cop.

'Chase' (the title of this movie when I saw it) had two meanings. Steven Chase, a construction worker, was the main character. And 'chase' was what was happening at the start of the movie--two cars tearing through the streets of Los Angeles, jumping over obstacles like the General Lee on 'The Dukes of Hazzard'.

When the chase ended, Steven was handed a gun and told he was 'it'. He was part of a deadly game run by a millionaire in an office. We were not told the exact nature of this game until about halfway through the movie, and even then we were told only a little at a time. This was an interesting way to present the situation. Violence, of course, was the primary way to deal with problems, and few characters survived.

And almost no one in this movie could act. William Zipp as Steven, and Paul W. Smith as Steele, the game's supervisor in the field, were the exceptions, and even they may have just seemed good by contrast.

Bainbridge Scott, as Diana, who helped Steven the most, at least had the ability to look tough, but she could not deliver dialogue. If there were auditions for this movie, I'd hate to see the people who lost.

I would like to have seen this movie done with good performances. There was potential.

i bought this movie off of amazon.com and i have a knack for AIP movies. ever since i saw William Zipp in operation war zone i wanted to see more of his work so this title came in mind. its cheesy stupid funny and dopey and i loved it heres the story: William Zipp somehow gets tagged into a game where random bad guys go after him for a gun and money. the only way to stay alive is to kill bad guys for money. there's plenty of action, fight scenes are good the ending could of been a little better but still rather enjoyable therefore thats why I'm giving this a thumbs up.

director David A Prior knows how to direct a movie with plenty of action in it however there's not a single standout performance in the entire movie the acting from the vast majority of the cast is terrible Bill Zipp is the only exception.