Destroyer (1988)

This film has a crew making a movie in a abandoned prison. The problem is one of the prisoners is still there and he is angry.This had Lyle Alzado playing the psycho. This guy was awesome but his career got cut short when just four years after making this he died of brain cancer. The whole concept of the film is cheesy but you still watch all the mayhem. One scene has Lyle chasing someone with a jackhammer which is the scene depicted on the cover. They don't show how much air hose he has or explain even why a working jackhammer would be left at the prison but it doesn't matter. He also likes to eat hair (maybe the person still had that Body On Tap shampoo that was enriched with beer). Overall he played a good nut job. Playing the director was Anthony Perkins who was always whining and grabbing his head. His best scene was when he sizzled and popped on the electric chair.A fun little film. Put your mind in neutral and enjoy.

Ivan Moser (Alzado) is an evil rapist/murderer who is in prison and about to receive the death penalty by electric chair. The authorities start the proceedings, but then a prison riot breaks out, diverting their attention. They assumed they fried Moser...but they were wrong! Meanwhile, a movie company begins shooting a film in the abandoned prison where Moser was. Seems like a smart idea. The movie is called "Death House Dolls" and is a women-in-prison flick. Edwards (Perkins) is the forever-frustrated director, and David Harris (Rohner) is the screenwriter and ideal 80's coolguy. His girlfriend Susan Malone (Foreman) is also working on the film. Harris wants to capture the utter realism of the prison experience, despite the fact that he's working on what seems to be a lightweight exploitation film, so he ends up butting heads with Warden Karsh (Mahoney) who was there on the night of the riot. But Harris also ends up getting some good info from local chef Fingers (Kristin). Will Moser, who has been presumably living at the prison for the past 18 months, we know not how or why, end up killing everyone in sight? When we saw the VHS box cover for Destroyer, with a hulking, oiled-up Alzado brandishing a giant drill of some sort, we thought "how can we lose?" - maybe it's our frame of mind, or maybe it's due to lack of research on our part, but we thought Destroyer was an action movie. Hopefully one where Alzado "Destroys" the baddies. Not such a bad assumption, but an incorrect one. Destroyer instead is a dreary, inane slasher with problems as seemingly endless as the vast corridors a lot of the movie takes place in. What the movie has going for it are its individual characters. Alzado was great as the psycho killer who's usually shirtless, Jim Turner is noteworthy as the techie on the film named Rewire, and David Kristin steals the movie as Fingers. The warden, the janitor Russell (Anderson), the young couple portrayed by Rohner and Foreman - who previously were together in April Fool's Day (1986) - a far more entertaining horror film - together, pretty much any of the individual personages were good, it's just that the writing and structure of the movie were slow, bleak, and not up to par. And nothing is worse than when they try to be funny. We blame the writers and director, not the actors.The movie also falls into the typical trap of making the warden supposedly unlikable because he's an authority figure, but the screenwriter dude supposedly sympathetic because he's so cool and the warden's not. Rohner, who has kind of a Johnny Depp meets Charlie Sheen kind of vibe, does indeed have awesome hair (there's even a fairly substantial scene where he's washing his hair) - but we were rooting for the warden. There's also a pretty surprising lack of Alzado - like a lot of movie monsters, you don't see a lot of him until the end of the movie. There should have been less Anthony Perkins directing the movie-within-a-movie and more Alzado on a rampage. While Deborah Foreman never looked closer to Belinda Carlisle than she does here, Alzado was never closer to John Matuszak than he is here. They have similar builds and facial hair. Maybe it's a football thing.As for the boxcover that so entranced us, it can proudly go into the "we pasted the main star's head on someone else's body and hoped no one would notice" file. As for the movie itself, it's not action, and it's not very horrifying. The individual characters are good, and there maybe a few decent lines here and there, but it's unlikely too many people will come away very satisfied from Destroyer.

Totally obscure slasher/action "thingie" from the late 80's that really doesn't have such a bad basic premise, actually. It's just suffering slightly from an overall clumsy execution, like pitiably written dialogs, lousy acting performances and not enough usage of great set pieces. "Destroyer" opens with the pretty awesome electrocution of a beefcake serial killer Ivan Moser, whose last wish was to watch an episode of Wheel of Fortune. It's a bit of a weird sight, but later it becomes clarified that the show's hostess was one of the killer's last victims. The first attempt to barbecue Ivan fails, and then riots break out in prison and the killer mysteriously vanishes. Years later, the abandoned prison is used as the setting for a sleazy and so-called "women-in-prison" flick; although the writer is convinced his film is a drama based on true events. Mr. Beefcake killer comes back to life and apparently one of the film's crew member, stunt woman and girlfriend of writer Susan Malone – has a psychic link with him. "Destroyer" is a very uneven horror effort. The film starts off very slow with a few extended and gradually build up towards murder sequences, and then suddenly shifts in high gear with multiple off-screen killings. The few on screen kills are disappointing and the giant jackhammer illustrated on the VHS cover hardly makes an appearance. Thanks to the film-within-film structure, however, there are some very welcome gratuitous nude sequences to enjoy. There isn't any real tension to detect in "Destroyer" and the beefcake dude, regardless of how ugly, isn't menacing at all. The guy, Lyle Alzado, apparently was a famous American Football player during the 70's and 80's. Hey, I'm European so I never heard about him before. To me, he's just a lousy wannabe actor who looks like the bodybuilder version of Luciano Pavarotti or maybe even Dom DeLuise on a really bad day. There's also a miserable little supportive role for washed up superstar Anthony Perkins as the director of the sleazy WIP-flick. At times, you can actually see him think back about the glorious days of "Psycho".

Yeah i love this movie, lots of people will say its terrible but those are also the same people who try to take this movie seriously which you can not. Its funny as hell, now was it meant to be funny? Yes and no i think, i am thinking they were looking for some laughs but not nearly as many as you will get from watching it. My favorite part is where Lyle is dressed as a cop or security guard, something along those lines and this guy comes up to him and asks him about the outfit and Lyle says "its a disguise" and the guy says "disguise from what?" and Lyle says "From You!!" and i think thats the part where this real big jackhammer comes out. Real funny stuff there, also there was a cool part with Anthony Perkins in the electric chair trying to get out before the current cameup to get him. Great stuff, now if only i could find this somewhere to buy since its getting very hard to find now.