Terror In Beverly Hills (1989)

TERROR IN BEVERLY HILLS is a Z-grade action flick from 1989 whose unbelievable storyline sees the president's daughter kidnapped by Arab terrorists and held hostage in Beverly Hills. Gruff-talking cop Cameron Mitchell isn't up to the task of rescuing her, so he calls in special forces man Frank Stallone to do the job. If you've ever wondered why Frank never had his brother Sly's success, you'll see that his wooden acting as evinced here was good enough reason. The quality of this movie is on the level of a typical independent flick, with poor-quality acting across the board and a generally sloppy feel. You'll be hard pressed to get any enjoyment from it at all, even if it does star cult favourite William Smith as the US president, of all people.

I might just have to opt for the latter. As we all know, there have been many terrible action movies over the years, but this one takes the awfulness to an extreme that I simply can't believe is unintentional. It's one of those flicks that would have been completely pointless for the cast of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" to parody, because it parodies itself far more deliciously than they ever could.If I were to pinpoint the exact moment I realized this, it must have been when, after product-placing cans of Pepsi and Diet Pepsi in pretty much every shot where they would make any sense (and a few where they wouldn't), the director chose to begin a scene by literally panning out from the Pepsi can. In retrospect, it really shouldn't have taken me that long."Terror in Beverly Hills" is a revelation of glorious badness. At its best/worst, it's at least as funny as anything Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker have done except for "Airplane!" and "Top Secret," and I've got to hand it to Myhers for his resourcefulness: he took an, erm, modest budget and the full knowledge that some people might take this thing seriously and judge him harshly, and he said "okay, fine" and just went with it.At the same time, the initial kidnapping scene contains many dead bystanders, and the last half-hour rather abruptly jettisons the humor value in favor of the usual sexual violence against women and machine-gun violence against men. The early-nineties score, by turns "Beverly Hills Cop light" and apparently geared toward a genuine suggestion of menace, further complicates things.An enigma wrapped in a mystery? Nah, I'm almost certainly overthinking it. Maybe the jarring tone shifts are simply due to the fact that the guy knew he was making a bad movie and woke up every day with a different attitude toward that fact.

Often the symbol of decadence, Beverly Hills took a cinematic beating in the early 90s through films like THE TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS (1991) and this cheap Frank Stallone action flick. Actually, calling it "cheap" is an insult to cheap films. This film is on the level of Al Adamson cheap. We're talking one long shot of a white limo driving down the road while characters voice over as much exposition dialogue that the shot will allow cheap. So cheap that a bomb consists of nothing more than a lump of clay with a digital watch face pressed in it. And yes, so cheap that William Smith's trademark gravely voice is dubbed. You get the point. Yet at the same time, they managed to shoot on location in Israel for the opening.Top billed Stallone stars as Hack Stone (yes, Hack Stone), but only appears in roughly 10 minutes of the first hour of the film. A majority of the time spent concentrating on Abdul (Vassoughi) and his Palestinian terrorist group as they hide out in an old bean factory. TERROR tries hard to elicit the thrills of DIE HARD but on a stretched budget of $10. When Stallone finally shows up for work in the last half hour, he enters the abandoned factory with only a rope and an M-16. I guess anything else would be unnecessary. And he manages to take out the entire terrorist unit without even using the rope! The film's sole highlight is the completely foul mouthed, over the top performance by Cameron Mitchell. As Police Capt. Stills, Mitchell seems to be making it up as he goes along, to great effect. While holding a press conference, an airplane flies overhead and Mitchell stops what he is saying to mutter, "Goddamn airplane!" Later he yells at a plain clothes cop, "Who the f#*k told you to wear that outfit?" When the cop replies, "You did," Mitchell barks out, "Well you know I have no f#*king sense of style!" Then again, maybe it was scripted that way. The screenplay by director Myhers (who co-scripted the Don Knotts/Tim Conway vehicles THE PRIZE FIGHTER and THE PRIVATE EYES) is laughable. "Come on man, don't be an a#*hole," utters Stallone when he finally confronts Abdul.

**SPOILERS** Angered at the Israeli Government interning 55 suspected terrorists Palestinian terror honchos Abdual & Muhammed, how's that for originality, plan to kidnap the President of the United States' daughter Margaret and threaten to kill her if he doesn't get the Israeli Government to release the 55 "Arab brothers" from jail pronto, which is 12 hours. Staking out this fancy clothing boutique on the swanky Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills the terrorists make their move. Taking out all the secret service men protecting Margaret, who was there shopping, as well as a number of customers in the store. Everything went like clock-work with the only drawback being Muhammed getting shot and wounded by a dying secret service man. With time running out and the L.A police chief stills not being able to do anything to save Margaret one of his men entered the terrorist hide-out posing as a doctor to treat Muhammed only to be exposed and murdered by the terrorists. Abdul now puts plan II into operation by having a number of his gang members grab the wife and son of former Marine commando Hack, the Hacker, Stone to get Hack drawn into the fray. You see Hack and Abdul were good friends a while ago in their role as CIA commandos and assassins and once they captured four terrorists in a fire-fight in the Syrian Desert. Abdul wanting to kill the four but was persuaded by Hack to let them live in order to get, or beat, information out of them. As it turned out two of the terrorists escaped and later murdered Abduls family and he's had it in for Hack, who he held responsible for the killings, ever since. It's not only Abdul who want's Hack to be sent to rescue Margaret, in order to kill him, it's the President himself who realizes that the L.A cops FBI ATF and SWAT teams are helpless to do the job and invokes the "Nuclear Option" by personally getting Hack, brother of Rocky & Rambo, Stone to do the impossible which in Hack's case is just routine. The terrorists who at first held all the cards start to fall apart from a combination of their own arrogance and stupidity. First getting creamed by the L.A police who stormed the beach-house where they were holding Hack's wife and young son. Then back in the hideout they blew their golden opportunity of pulling off this well thought-out scheme. That's when one of the terrorists got so horny that he tried to rape Margaret, by untying her, and thus allowing her to make a run for it. Hack slowly working his way into the terrorists hideout, an abandoned bean factory,takes out all the bad guys leaving only him and Abdul to duke it out at the conclusion of the movie. Frank Stallone who's not as well known and popular as his famous older brother action hero Sylvester is effective in the fight scenes that he's in and his diction and command of the English language is much better then that of Sly's. The movie "Terror in Beverly Hills" is only just average with nothing that you haven't seen before in that type of film. What I found really interesting in the movie was the acting of Careron Mitchell as the L.A police Captain Stills who was on the verge of having a breakdown. Not just from the stress of the terrorists kidnapping and threatening to murder Margaret but how he was consistently harassed by the local TV news anchorman and his film crew all throughout the movie. Those jerks were a bigger danger to the president's daughter as well as the police and government authorities, not to mention Hack, risking their lives to save her then even the terrorists were!