The Wraith - 1986

I feel like I go through phases with this blog.  I have seen countless movies that could have fit into this blog.  I even rewatched It's Alive, my favorite mosasaurus film, and I made my friend watch it.  I've been revisiting serious films as well, and suffice to say I haven't really felt like blogging about all this crap I do.

I may have mentioned at some point that I was listening to How Did This Get Made, the podcast about bad movies.  I enjoy it, and I like watching the movies they feature on it.  When they featured The Wraith, and then when The Wraith was available free on Netflix, a small part of me celebrated.  I hate how a lot of these films they do are not available for free online.  I refuse to spend money right now.  I'm ultra-cheap.

The Wraith is a surprisingly high production car racing movie from the 80's.  It continues my 1986 marathon, about 2 years after I initially started my 1986 marathon.  Wow, that's fucking weird dude, I remember startling this marathon like it was yesterday.  I'm getting old man, time is passing faster and faster.  I also had a bad thought when I signed onto the Blogspot site today.  I had an inevitable feeling like this blog was over.  I hope it's not, I hope I continue, but somehow....I don't think it's destined to live much longer.

But let's not live in the future, let's live in the now.  In the now, 31 years ago, Charlie Sheen, Randy Quaid, Sharilyn Fenn, and Nick Cassavetes starred in The Wraith.  The Wraith is about an alien force that comes to town in Arizona, in the form of a sleek black roadster car.  The evil gang of baddies see the car and want it.  They challenge the wraith to a race, the loser gives up their car.  The Wraith starts to kill all the members of the gang in these races, forcing them off the road in crashes.  This is all pursued by Randy Quaid as the local police.  Charlie Sheen is a seemingly unconnected drifter who starts wooing the girl of the leader of the street gang.

The movie consists of pretty well done, highly produced race scenes.  Crazy songs play in the background, either established classics or songs that missed the mark I guess and faded into 80s obscurity.  There's tons of race scenes, and the cars are very cool.  The titular Wraith is a concept car, a Dodge from the 80's.  I tried to upload a photo but fucking blogspot is being a bitch.  Google it.

The movie proceeds, it's very simple and yet never boring.  Seriously this movie just flew right by, and I liked it a lot.  Very well done, lots of deaths and explosions.  There's a sense of mystery to this thing, and we're not sure what exactly is The Wraith or anything for quite a long time.  In the end, some things are explained, but some are wisely left as a mystery and never explained fully.  I think the basic idea is fine though:  we're left with a dim idea of what happened and why, and I think it's a near flawless 80s romp.

Four classic action sci fi stars.

Megaforce - 1982

Golden Harvest is a Chinese production company that has been around a long time and (I think) is still going strong.  They've brought us Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung and other great stars.  In the 80's they decided to infiltrate the US market with a few American made and American style films, such as Megaforce.  This was a big deal for them.  They threw $20 million at a sci fi actioner film called Megaforce, and hoped that it would massively succeed enough for them to successfully gain a foothold in the American market.

Megaforce is by and large a extremely 80's sci fi action flick that is easy to watch, but not so much on the great side of the scale.  It feels extremely high production, and it's easy to see where the 20 million went, however is the film "good"....?  Well, no, I am going to say it's not.  Not for your typical array of reasons, but simply because it's not entertaining.

Barry Bostwick stars as a generic commander of an elite group of special soldiers known as the Megaforce.  The Megaforce is introduced in the beginning when a stiff British general comes to meet the commander, and the general is put off by Megaforce's apparent lack of adoption of regular military style.  They have no uniforms, they don't care about rank, and they don't worry about the image like other military people would.

Along with the general is Persis Khambatta, of Star Trek and She Wolves of the Wasteland fame.  She is sort of a blank woman creation made to be the love interest of Barry Bostwick's commander dude.  I don't remember exactly why she was with the general to begin with, but suffice to say she's there to be eye candy and the sole female in this entire flick.  She is hot as fuck in case you haven't noticed, so I'm not complaining or anything.  Megaforce gets their mission, and she tries to join the Megaforce, but Boswick won't let her because "he can't, or he won't?" type reasons which are fairly stupid.

The mission involves the usual stuff: blowing up countless things, shooting lots of guns, and motorcycles.  It's all fun to watch, but it plays a lot like a tired kung fu or bland action film where you feel nothing for the hero or villain and don't really care what will happen in the end.  Also, there is never a single moment where you actually think the good guy will lose or even get a scratch on them, so it makes for a bland, pretty lame cinema experience.  I watched it while drunk on Irish coffee on my sick day.

Not sure what else to say about it.  The production, actors, the look, the style, the pacing, it's all there.  This has the ingredients of a classic bad action film from the 80's, but somehow I wasn't very interested in it.  Couldn't say exactly why.  Perhaps it's just not for me.  I'll still give it 3 stars.