Murdercycle

For my money, there's nothing more terrifying than a plastic-covered motorcycle driving laps around people in slow motion. My chest was pounding as laser blasts from this unholy machine ricocheted off wooden wagon wheels and rusty metal. There was too much heart-stopping action in this movie to withstand!

"Murdercycle" is a weak (albeit fairly harmless) horror/action film from Full Moon pictures. The acting is very, very poor. Community theater level poor. People can't hold guns properly in this movie, and acting is replaced with disconcerting twitches and squints. Those faults are humorous ones, however; we can enjoy ourselves with the low quality of the acting and sets (two buildings, a lot of trees, and a janitor's break room comprise the shooting locations).

My real problem with "Murdercycle" is the character of Dr. Lee. She's a woman with psychic powers employed by the government. How does she have these powers? She explains, "Everybody has the ability to use this gift - but few do." I would venture to guess that the reason that people don't use this gift is that it turns you into a somber, completely uninteresting bore who contributes nothing to life. This character is pointless, uninteresting, unattractive, and annoying.

The murdercycle itself is a funny thing. A dirt bike covered with black plastic mounted with lasers of varying power. One minute, the laser blows up a truck. The next minute, it's rendered impotent by rotten wood. More often than not, the murdercycle kills it's victims by simply running over them. That's some space-age alien technology for you.

I can't bring myself to completely pan this movie. I enjoyed myself when not subjected to the monotone speeches of Dr. Lee. Avoid this if you're hoping for even somewhat decent action. Check it out if you're looking for a laugh.

I usually like Full Moon stuff, just because they're so ridiculously funny, but this one wasn't funny-bad, just bad-bad. These three or four marines with a couple of civilians go try to kill an alien motorcycle--excuse me, MURDERcycle. They actually start calling it that in the movie, too. One of the civilians is a psychic, but she seems to be relatively useless until the very, very end. Some plot twists, but nothing to really hold one's interest, and nothing you can't see coming a mile away though a fog bank. Even the funny alien-watcher can't save this bad one from the trash heap, but he was a nice diversion.

True this movie was nothing spectacular. The special effects weren't really all that special. The acting wasn't Oscar worthy. The script was a little..well it was just a little... Yes we could all tell the "murdercycle" was covered with rubber and such...but come on...This movie wasn't too, too bad. I don't normally like sci-fi movies. I am more into HORROR. I love (for whatever reason) movies by Full Moon. This one was from one of their own spin off productions company's: ActionExtreme. This movie had an original idea (not the alien part), that really tried to develop into something. Though there was a very slow part, it did pick up towards the end, and finished with an "there could be a sequel" ending. Watch with an open mind. It is a B-movie, it was filmed on an old studio lot and that is very obvious. The whole thing probably didn't cost over a couple hundred thousand to make..Take that into consideration, and just enjoy the movie.

Everything in this movie is bad. The title is hilariously bad. The plot is a 1950s cheap sci-fi reject. The acting is uniformly horrendous. I mean, you get the feeling that these actors were told to just be themselves, and they couldn't get THAT right. Not one word is pronounced in a genuine-sounding form. The dialogue is mind-numbing. The humor is beyond idiotic. At best some of the conspiracy references were mildly amusing, although highly unoriginal in a post-"X Files" era. The best humor is unintentional, and even that is not enough. The cinematography was lame, with people crowded into one small space for some shots, shaky camerawork in other shots, lone people captured in the side rather than the center in what were supposed to be key shots, and an overall cheap-looking quality of film that reminds one more of a Cinemax soft-core porno. The special effects were outdated by 20 years, with the best effect being a blatant rip off of both "Terminator" and "Predator". I usually don't mind imitations of good things from other movies, but this was too much. There was slow-motion overkill, particularly whenever the 'murdercycle' showed up. The editing was bad. The score was severely unexciting and unatmospheric. The characters were heavily boring. And you have to wonder why it takes something as powerful as the 'murdercycle' to break into where it needed to break in to retrieve what it was looking for, particular given that it can materialize anywhere it wants to (talk about extraterrestrial intelligence). The costumes were boring. The set design was lifeless. And there's all sorts of things that don't make sense, like one guy getting shot in the back by a cheap laser beam from the 'murdercycle', which causes the GROUND beneath him to explode, making him merely flip around without a scratch, in typical action movie fashion. And the worst part of all is that everyone involved in the film is taking it seriously.

One could say that this would be the movie that most of the cast and crew would remove from their resume later on in their career. Unfortunately, none of the people involved in this flick look like they have a career ahead of them.

Nine of the character names are taken from big name comic book creators--

Neal ADAMS

John BUSCEMA

Vince COLLETTA

Steve DITKO

Frank FRAZETTA

Jack KIRBY

Stan LEE

Arnie SINNOTT

and

Wally WOOD