Skyscraper (1996)

A helicopter charter soon turns deadly when the female pilot finds that she is on a building held by terrorists. It is up to her and her husband to save the hostages. Skyscraper is half soft core porn, half an action movie and an all made Die Hard rip-off and actually quite fun and better than i expected. There's lots of action and one liners, the acting isn't that impressive but you shouldn't really care and the best scenes out of the movie were definitely Anna Nicole Smith's twin towers that were pretty big overall and nice.. (8/10)

Skyscraper (1996) * 1/2 (out of 4)Anna Nicole Smith plays Carrie Wish, a helicopter pilot who ends up in a skyscraper with a group of terrorists. Thankfully Carrie's husband, a detective, taught her how to handle herself with a gun and soon she's going head-to-head with the males.This here is basically DIE HARD with boobs. This film has gained a pretty big cult following over the years because of how bad it is and you know why people were renting this back in 1996. Smith got a fairly big paycheck to appear in this movie and obviously her male fans were wanting to see her naked. What else do guys like? Why bloody violence and action of course so the producers just threw everything together but the end result isn't that good.For starters, this here was a direct-to-VHS film so one really shouldn't expect too much. Thankfully it's stupid enough to where it's at least watchable and a lot of the credit has to go to Smith and her awful performance. Her line reading is among the worst you'll ever hear and there's no question that more times than not you'll be laughing at it. She's not very believable as an action star either but this too brings some laughs. With that said, she wasn't hired for her acting. It was her chest that got her the part and fans will be happy to know that there are three sex/nude scenes.In all honesty, this film is extremely ambitious for a direct-to-VHS title because the budget was obviously higher than normal. The action scenes are pretty good when you consider this was meant to be on video. There are plenty of shoot outs and explosions throughout. SKYSCRAPER has all the elements of a cult movie and on that level it works. Just don't be expecting the quality of DIE HARD.

In the pantheon of action stars that perhaps should not have become action stars, a few names come to mind. Judge Reinhold. Steve Guttenberg. Jay Leno. Steven Seagal. Now we can proudly add to that storied list Anna Nicole Smith, who was the obvious choice to stand in for Bruce Willis in a classic 90's Die Hard knockoff (or "DieHardInA" movie - see our review for Sudden Death to see a comprehensive list). Of course, usually a DieHardInA movie takes the Die Hard template and moves it to a certain location, like a water treatment plant or a hockey game. Here, it's Die Hard in a...building. How they ever got the idea to put this plot line in a skyscraper, we'll never be able to figure out. But that's the issue: this is really just standard fare, with only the novelty of the Anna Nicole stunt casting to set it apart. So it really doesn't matter that the action was moved from a skyscraper to a skyscraper (as if we, as viewers, were having trouble understanding that, they felt the need to call the movie Skyscraper). It wasn't the location that needed to be changed, it's the star. Instead of a water treatment plant, they got Anna Nicole.Anyone who is familiar with PM will recognize their hallmarks here: well-done blow-ups, plenty of gun-shooting, rocket launchers (this time with "rocket vision"), an exploding helicopter, and a familiar cast and crew of regulars such as Raymond Martino and fan-favorite Malibu (AKA Deron McBee). McBee looks so feminine here, when he fights Anna Nicole, it's kind of hard to tell who's who. Perhaps that's why they made his long, flowing mane brown instead of its usual blonde, as one of the sole means of differentiation. He and his other main terrorist partner certainly dress for success: rather than wearing fatigues or something like that, they wear leather pants and man-blouses.Seagal and Anna Nicole do have many things in common: they both struggle with their acting, they both struggle with their action scenes, and they're both pleasantly plump. If they ever had a baby, the results might be along the lines of Beverly Hills Ninja. But without the talent of Chris Farley. To be fair, though, these were the pre-Trimspa days. While we do have to wait a while for it, we do get some Anna Nicole-Fu. Before that, we get some Skinemax-style nudity/sex scenes (mentally take yourself back to 1996. If you rented Skyscraper and the nudity factor wasn't there, you would feel wicked cheated. However, "look not through a knothole, lest ye be vexed" as what nudity there is is more freakish/odd than hot), and plenty of inane dialogue such as "I got a bad feeling about this!" - though, to be fair once again, someone does say the time-honored classic "We got company!", which we always notice.So while it was the 90's - the era of pagers - computer graphics in the movie really do resemble Pong. We know it was low-budget, but come on. We think the Zitex Corporation (is this where they create zits?) can probably do better. But the bottom line is, we all know why we're here. For the freakish novelty of Anna Nicole Smith in a PM action movie. If that's something you think you can handle, by all means, take a ride on Heliscort (who comes up with these names?) and have some fun with the so-bad-it's-goodness.

I laughed, I laughed. Skyscraper is without doubt, the lamest movie I have ever seen. It was on one of my movie channels last night and I had to watch the whole thing to ensure it was indeed worthy of knocking Commando from the perch as the worst movie ever. Ana Nicole Smith, while topless in 2 scenes, basically read her lines (which may have been quite an accomplishment for her) with the emotional range of a dead squirrel. Setting aside Ana, the farcical gun play and other "acting" is simply terrible. Oh yea, and the story is a total plagiary of Die Hard. Worse movie ever. Worse movie ever. Worse movie ever. For a good laugh, enjoy.