Crash and Burn (1990)

At least it doesn't live up to its title, which is a good thing. Crash and burnnnnnn. On the other hand it might have been more exciting if it did. I don't know, but I remember liking this straight-to-video b-grade action / Sci-fi fare by Charles Band when I saw it for the first time many moons ago, but upon my recent re-watch I was left slightly under whelmed. Boy did it take awhile for something remotely riveting to occur. My excitement early on arose from catching a glimpse of a movie poster of "The Angry Red Planet" on the wall. Not once, but twice. Outside a pouting Megan Ward and Jack McGee (in a truly offensive mood), everyone else acts robotic. Is this to throw us off…? I don't think so. Bill Moseley is the life of the party… as what starts off as uncharacteristic (in a slumber mood) later on has you thinking now I'm watching Moseley perform. Paul Ganus is your typical handsome, but stoic lead who catches the eyes of the ladies (young and old). He doesn't do much at first, other than look serious. All in a good days work. Actually I guess sex was on mind. Nothing else. Nothing more. As after getting that out of the way (about mid-way through the movie), while lying in bed (for about 10 seconds) his character was thinking straight (well its either that or he's considerably slow off the blocks) and it came to him that something wasn't quite right (during a "heart-pounding" test set-up to find out if everyone trapped in this remote TV station was who they said they were). Now that he knows who the evil corporate Sythnoid robot in disguise is. Although we the audience (and Ward) have already figured that out long ago. It's time to be a hero. Jump out of bed, break the emergency glass and grab the shotgun. Then get pummelled and shot. Talk about an effective hero. However this is when things do liven up. Nasty jolts, stupid one-liners, robots going haywire and Ward making everyone around her look like dummies. "Hey, kiss this!". Director Charles Band does an economical job with J.S Cardone's material and recycles Richard Band's music talents. Visually is works cementing a futuristic wasteland, as the setting is taut and the paranoid unease is felt. In the dying stages you can see where most of the money went to and the effects of the battery powered tinbot put those recent CGI drenched transformers films to shame. Mildly amusing low-rent Full Moon fodder.

I've always liked movies about folks trapped in a building/house/isolated area/etc and this Full Moon production didn't disappoint me.Hottie Ganus arrives at some TV station in the middle of the desert and shortly after people begin to die. Ward was cute as the teenage girl with an obvious crush on Ganus. LaRue I felt was wasted, Moseley was great as always as the robot gone bad. McClellan and Armstrong who play prostitutes are there to boost the body count as well as McGee.The acting I felt was adequate, some of the big robot effects were passable, but I did liked the 2 or 3 bloody death scenes and Moseley's scene where we find out he's a robot, just wish the men had shown as much skin as the women.

2030: In the grim greenhouse effect ravaged future psychotic android Quinn (deliciously played to the fabulously freaky hilt by Bill Moseley; Otis in "House of 1,000 Corpses") kills a few people in a rundown old TV station because grouchy owner Lathan Hooks (a lively, although sadly brief turn by Ralph Waite; the father on "The Waltons") is secretly giving information to a group of underground fighters who are opposed to the oppressive authoritarian Orwellian "1984"-ish government. Although this film suffers a bit from a muddled script by J.S. Cardone (who also wrote and directed the superior "Shadowzone") and occasionally sluggish pacing, "Crash and Burn" still nonetheless rates as an engrossing and entertaining sci-fi action opus thanks to Charles Band's energetic direction, well drawn characters, solid acting from a sturdy cast (the lovely Megan Ward makes for an engagingly spunky heroine while veteran character actor John Davis Chandler pops up in a nice bit as a crusty gas station proprietor), nifty stop motion animation by David Allen, pleasingly grody make-up f/x by Greg Cannom, and a stirring score by the indefatigable Richard Band. Good, modest Grade B fun.

This horribly directed 'movie' could be one of the biggest dissapointments I have seen for a while. Being a big fan of the movie, Robot Jox, I came across this in a video store, and the title, Crash and Burn, was one of the lines from Robot Jox that I remembered well and stored in my everyday vocabulary. I saw that there was a robot on the cover... maybe this is a Robot Jox-like movie, I thought in pure excitment. But then reality....horrible reality came upon me. The movie in itself is worthless....horribly directed, bad effects, and a robot which is only in the whole movie for 1 minute. I thought the movie started to go downhill once the main character meets that girl and she asks him to stay over.... me and a friend were both like "NO! Don't stay over!" But he did. And that's the whole movie. Him staying over at some girl's place, hiding from the sun, blah blah blah. Bad plot, horrible acting, crappy script, tight budget..... the list goes on and on. Don't waste your time or money on this. It is not at all like Robot Jox.