Crash Point Zero (2000)

i work as a translator for a local TV station. since it's local, it's criminally underfunded. but it has a program to run. translated, that means it's buying a lot of cheap B-movies. so in my "line of duty", i'm forced to watch a lot of crap. and i mean A LOT. more than anyone who has a choice ever had to. "crash point zero" was one such example. and oh my god, where do you begin? the other reviewers broke it down pretty accurately: from borrowing unused and differently textured shots from other movies (ed wood would've been proud!), to characters driving three (THREE!) distinct cars (one of them blue, two of them red) within a single scene, to the laughable and meaningless dialog, HORRENDOUS acting, and an all-around stench of amateur pointlessness. the list of examples of sheer stupidity in this flick would be higher than burj dubai! i guess 99% of what little budget they had went into the last-scene explosion (the only semi-decent thing in this abomination of a movie) to the detriment of everything else. really, some of this stuff is simply beyond words and has to be seen to be believed. what's astonishing is a feeling that the crew (well, at least most of them - some "actors" have that "what the f*ck am i doing here? hope nobody i know sees this" look on their face) labor under the illusion that they're creating a serious and suspenseful thriller, and obviously take it all very seriously, which is just amazing. i mean, there's nothing wrong in a B-flick that's aware of its "B-ness" and shamelessly flaunts it, but a deluded B-flick that thinks it's something more than it is is just pathetic. granted there are even worse, cheaper and misguidedly serious movies than this ("hyper sonic", for example), this still pretty much redefines the term "a B-movie". if you're done watching your paint dry, rent this and be amazed. really, it's quite a feat.

*Spoilers* (Not that there's much to spoil anyway)These days, I'm unsure of what exactly the definition of a "B-movie" is. I've seen people refer to stuff by the Golan-Globus Cannon group as "B-movies" and straight to video stuff from the likes of PM Entertainment. Well, if you consider those as "B-movies", then we really have to bring up a new name for stuff like "Extreme Limits", or "Crash Point Zero" as it's listed as here. Since this is so far below your average straight to video actioner that it can barely even be called a movie.Extreme Limits is basically just stock footage from Cliffhanger, Narrow Margin and Long Kiss Goodnight with some actors and actresses making a fool of themselves and laughably cheap sets in between. Trying to pursue something which isn't possible with the budget your using is not a good idea to begin with, but stealing stock footage from big studio productions is just lame in my opinion. Of course, if director Jim Wynorski was able make this footage blend with the new footage well and create an exciting movie around it then I wouldn't have too much to complain about, but it's the completely laughable and amatuerish way it's all tacked together which makes this so unintentionally entertaining to watch. While the new footage actually has a very clean and smooth look, the stock footage from Cliffhanger looks extremely fuzzy and grainy. Ditto with that from Narrow Margin. At one point, in the new footage there is fake snow and then it cuts to the stock footage where there is no snow. In another scene, Ava Fabian starts shooting into the air and then it cuts to an avalanche scene from Cliffhanger, supposedly triggered by her firing a few shots. But that's not nearly all. We have a chase scene involving a 4x4 (SUV for you Americans) being chased and shot at from a helicopter which I believe is from Narrow Margin. This randomly cuts between scenes of Julie St Claire and Treat Williams in a car with a blurred moving background. Now in that scene, you can clearly see there is a road behind them, yet the vehicle in the Narrow Margin footage is driving over rough terrain in the middle of a forest. But there's so much more. Another scene I laughed out loud during was when one of the characters is attacked by a bear early on. You see this guy in one cut, pretending to be scared. Then it cuts to extremely grainy stock footage that looks like it's been shot on VHS for a documentary on a of a bear roaring. It cuts back to this guy pretending to be scared, and then we get a distant shot of this guy supposedly being attacked behind trees. It's hard to put it into words, but this entire scene needs to be scene to be believed. Moving onto the climax which I believe comes from The Long Kiss Goodnight. This footage is the only stock footage which doesn't look fuzzy and grainy. But don't worry, Jim has made plenty of effort to make it gel together with the new footage as badly as possible. At one point we see a blue Ford Taurus from The Long Kiss Goodnight footage, then in the next cut of new footage, we see some square edged 80's car (Perhaps a Ford Crown Victoria or Chevrolet Caprice). Then Julie St Claire steals an Oldsmobile Allero, which we're supposed to believe is the same car that drives away from the bridge explosion in the stock footage from Long Kiss Goodnight. But it again clearly isn't, as the one featured in the stock footage is clearly an older car, perhaps a Mercury Sable. It again shows Williams and St. Claire sitting in a static car with a fiery background. And if you happen to get a hold of the DVD of this, the audio commentary is also a real hoot. It basically consists of Jim Wynorski revealing just what a mess it is while Julie St Claire giggles in the background. He comes clean that he got the footage from Cliffhanger in exchange for casting the wife of some guy who was "high up" in Sony for the movie. At one point, they even run out of things to say and Julie sparks up the conversation again with a giggle. During the aforementioned scene where there's fake snow in the new footage and none in the stock footage, Julie St. Claire points this out and it actually seems to be the first time the director himself notices this! He ends it by saying "We screwed up, yeah we screwed up, no excuses!". I could hardly agree more.As for the performances, given with what they had to work with, it's rather hard to judge as no matter who was cast in this, it would be impossible to make anything out of it as these poor people had to constantly make belief they were actually part of the very obvious stock footage. Treat Williams has given reasonable performances in the other movies I've seen him in, so I think it's fair to say he deserves better than this. Julie St. Claire is absolutely gorgeous on the eyes and Lorissa McComas is rather nice also. Ava Fabian, the 80's Playboy icon is still looking good for her age. But that has nothing to do with how awful, or how laughable this whole movie is.As for the plot, it's just basically ripped off from the movie it steals footage from, Cliffhanger. Except this time the bad guys are after a "secure shipment of the world's deadliest explosives" rather than cash. Throw in the extremely suspenseful cliche of a diabetic man trapped in the snow and we've got something really new!!Having made it clear that it was the DVD of this I saw, you may be wondering why or how I got hold of it. Well I'll confess, I actually bought it for $3 while I was on holiday in San Francisco 2 weeks ago. $3 is less than the average rental fee from Blockbuster Video here in the UK, so having had the laugh this gave me, I feel absolutely no regret and I also recommend anyone who wants to see modern Ed Wood style filmmaking, if you come across this for a similar price, then make the purchase. It will make your day!I also notice that Jim Wynorski has worked with Albert Pyun on something called "More Mercy". I really can't imagine how bad, or unintentionally hilarious that may be.Extreme Limits:Production values: 01/10Plot: 01/10Suspense: 01/10Comedy value: 10/10I also see no reason for this to have a USA R rating, as other than the occasional F word, the few original action scenes are so badly shot and so non violent that it deserves a PG-13 at the very highest.

This is a truely "lovely" film. All of the ladies in the film find true love other than the girl who is taking care of her father, but he survives, so all is love. Even the bear gets a couple hugs in the film. The leading lady finds Treat Williams. A lady writer on the plane meets the leading ladies father, and the young couple patch things up and are about to go off into the sunset. The bear didn't fare quite so well in the end, I am afraid.Most of the scenery was shot next to a forest service campground about two miles from Rock Creek Lake in California. I have been there lots of times. If you look in the beginning you will see a couple of the outhouses in the pic. They found the magic box there. They crashed their plane there, and they treked and trecked to get away from there but never got accross the highway. But, Mount Morgan is always in the picture. Rock Creek Lake lies in the valley where all the trees are. Rock Creek Lake is only about 30 miles from Bishop, CA. And that is where some of the street scenes were shot. I bet the crew all stayed at "Tom's Place" which is at the entrance to Rock Creek Canyon. Tom's has a bar, a restaurant and quite a few rooms. I had fun with the movie. Actually I rather enjoyed the film. At times it was so bad it was funny. The wild ride in the Bronco with Williams cracking jokes all the way was stupid and because it was stupid I had to laugh

Just wanted to add to the comment by Bailey-21(Alabama)...who said "the entire climax of this... is nearly an exact copy of that film (Long Kiss). Frame for frame, it's a pitiful ripoff."If you look at this scene 'Frame by frame', you can actually SEE Geena Davis standing by the truck! this is the SAME FOOTAGE!I wonder if both films were made by the same studio, and they ran out of money on this one, or if this is even legal!I felt Ripped Off!