LIGHT BLAST

Evil Dr. Svoboda (Ennio Girolami) has created the "light blast" machine, a laser, that when shot at a digital clock, causes any heads in the vacinity to melt. being the evil doctor that he is, Svoboda threatens to melt San Francisco if the mayor doesn't pay him 5 million dollars. i couldn't help but think of Austin powers at this part...5 million seems like a measly sum to prevent the destruction of a huge city and to protect thousands of lives. maybe Svoboda just wanted to break even-the light blast maching must have cost about 5 mill to build.

next we meet our hero, officer Ron Warren, played by latin heart throb Erik Estrada. yes, THE Erik Estrada. Ron is one of those "on the edge" cops-you know the kind, the ones that shoot people in the head with turkey guns and beat up bank robbers in their underwear. Ron is assigned to find Dr. Svoboda and put a stop to his head melting shenanigans.

let me just say right here that this is an incredibly silly movie, and in lesser hands it would be unbearable-but the goofy script is merely an excuse for Castellari to show off his flair for directing action scenes, and he does just that. Light Blast has some of the wildest stunts and crazy action scenes this side of a Jackie Chan movie, and i'm not talking about Rush Hour, this stuff compares to police Story. this movie also gets a bad taste award for a just plain wrong shoot out in a mortuary with stray bullets hitting the corpses.

for an Italian sci-fi action flick, the budget seems huge: they got Erik Estrada, who at the time was pretty popular, and they managed to close down large sections of busy San Francisco streets and highways for chase scenes.

a really stupid but really fun film that you'll want to rewind and watch over again.


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