Ever get that feeling like you're being watched? You know, the odd little psychic spark in your brain that has you thinking there's someone (or something in my case) with their eyes glued to your every movement, licking their lips and possibly munching on a day old ham salad sandwich on rye... I gotta stop skipping lunch when I do this... Anyway, you know what I mean, the uncomfortable sensation that you've become the center of somebody's attention for whatever reason, and that they'll probably stalk you to the ends of the Earth rather than look away from you for a second... this is something that a copy of Metalstorm: The Destruction Of Jared-Syn need never worry about, as no one, and I feel it absolutely necessary to stress the words "NO" and "ONE", will ever view this film with an unflinching eye or unshaken attention to it's no-budget nuances and toothache inducing details!... Bet you were wondering where I was going with that opening bit, weren't ya?

Featuring Music Composed by Richard Band, direction by Charles Band and executive production courtesy of Albert Band, Metalstorm isn't just a shitty little sci-fi flick from the age of self-indulgence and oozing cinematic diarrhea, but it's also a family affair! Luckily there's no Mr. French around to make things worse... though how this movie could get much worse to begin with is a mystery. Metalstorm also brags that it's "Introducing R. David Smith", so, being a Death God devoted to his work (or in this case his time wasting hobbies), I looked into exactly what it was that the movie was "introducing" Mr. R. David Smith to. I was hoping to make one of those "this was his first, and LAST, movie making experience", but in this case that's NOT the case... is the case... uhm... the case... As I was saying, Mr. Smith ("R." to his friends) actually went on to do a couple of films, including Chevy Chase's Fletch Lives, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and stunt work in one of the better sequels featured in The Tomb Of Anubis, Predator 2... damn, so much for my zinger at "R."'s expense... oh well, I'm sure the Band family can supply me with more than enough for the course of this review. If all else fails I can always toss in mention of Spam or Circus Peanuts, as they're comical delicacies for any situation!

Fans of Band's later work with Full Moon Pictures' Dollman may enjoy the opening of Metalstorm, as it's badly done and overly grainy and muddy blue screen FX are but a simple preview of the kind that would show up years later in Band's work. Though I know that almost everything that has Chuck Band's name on it at some point is horrible for an array of reasons, I still can't hate him or his work... I think it's an addictive chemical on the videocassettes, like Anthrax powder, only without all the pain and dying. Well, without PHYSICAL pain and dying anyway. This opening scene finds the movie's hero, Dogen (I think it's an Albanian name), as he carts around your typical post-apocalyptic wasteland in his Mad Maxian (no, not "Mad Mexican") car, shooting down an airborne attacker who's after him for some reason. In "after the fall of the world" situations like this, the likely cause of attack was because Doggy either has A. Water, B. Gasoline, C. A Woman, D.The Key To Saving Humanity, or E. All Of The Above. Whatever the reason, afterwards our protagonist plunders the corpse and it's wreckage, discovering a red crystal shard. Speaking of crystals, from this happy moment of foreshadowing and hero introduction, we jump elsewhere to a father-daughter mining couple, who at this very moment have discovered a rather large and valuable crystal in a previously abandoned mine... hmmm, I'll bet the miners who previously worked said mine would be kicking themselves in the ass if they found out they left the place for barren a mere few feet from a jackpot...

Too bad for the two that their deliverance from poverty into a life that doesn't involve digging in dirt for loose change is quickly halted, as a gang of claim jumpers happen by. The leader of this little group, a cyborg named Baal (Mr. R.) relieves the old guy of any responsibilities like respiration and circulation of fluids (via squirting him with green goo that teleports him to Baal's dad, Jared-Syn, who then kills him... an awful lot of effort just to kill an old prospector... maybe Baal's too pussy to do his own work) and attempt to take Dhyanna (the daughter) and the crystal, but find an obstacle in their path. As you can guess, that obstacle is good ol' Dogen, who foils their attempts and sends the goons packing. After they leave, Dogen and Dhyanna get to know each other a little better and Doggy coughs up some more exposition as to just what the Hell it is we're watching. Seems Doggy's known as a "Seeker", meaning his job in the movie is to seek (naturally) and destroy the evil title character Jared-Syn. Turns out Syn is the leader of a tribe of nomadic terrorists and Dog is to take him out and hopefully put down the angry wanderers with his demise. As luck would have it, the goons who killed Dhy's daddy and stole her pretty red crystal also happen to be under Syn's employ, giving her a reason to join Dogen beyond her obvious potential as his one-dimensional cinematic love interest. On the body of one of the dead villains, Dog finds another of those red shards, which we find are used by Syn and his posse to steal their victims' lifeforce for use as a fuel source in some kind of ultimate weapon, hence why the third rate Mad Max was called in to repossess his lease on life. Not long after joining forces (and genitalia) the couple find themselves in a dessert chase scene and battling an electrical monster. Yeah, the first dates are always the most awkward, but enjoy it, because the relationship soon gets stale and you both find yourselves either totally uninterested in your partner or holding a .44 to their head and quoting the Bible... or the Necronomicon in my case... you'd be surprised how many times I've had to recite the Invocations of Yog-Sothoth during hostage situations and blackouts in sanity.

If you couldn't have guesses it already, Syn's men get their filthy paws on Dhy while she's camping out and take her back to their master and his evil mutant toaster of a son. To help him find the bad guys and save the girl, Dog first locates the experienced and lovable old coot Rhodes (Tim Thomerson!) to help him out in his seeking, convincing him eventually to do just that and lend a hand, being a former Seeker after all. After evading a legion of disgruntled hand puppets that we're supposed to believe are "sand worms", the heroic duo stumble into the waiting arms of a clan of cyclopean thugs lead by Hurak (Richard Moll), who aren't too friendly with their guests. Now, these aren't cyclopeans in the traditional sense, as they simply have one eye covered with a patch of deformed flesh. Genetic mutation or physical deformity, you decide. This little handicap does make for some unfortunate traffic altercations though... To win their freedom and their lives, Doggy must battle Hurak in a badly choreographed pit pummeling, which, being the hero (or at least a sad attempt at a hero), our Seeker obviously comes out the victor. With their freedom won and the respect of the cyclopeans garnered, Dog and Rhodes get back to their seeking of Syn. I've come to find that if you're seeking sin, the best place to go is the internet, so what better place to review this movie, which reminds me, after I get through here I think I'll go do some seeking of my own and find some graven images of my neighbor's wife to covet while I fellatio on myself... Reynolds style as Banky would say... want a chocolate covered pretzel?

Finally the duo discover Syn's "lost city" (which looks more like a sad little Taliban encampment), where they run over an extra and shoot the place up, turning many a futuristic wasteland vehicular transport (Syn must shop at The Road Warrior's Used Cars... figures, with a name like Mad Max you gotta peg him for a used car salesman!) into so much fire and airborne chunks of steel. Hmmmm, I guess that's where the obscure title of Metalstorm came from... Rhodes and Doggy escape to regroup and plan out their siege of Syn's impenetrable tent fortress, but a sneak attack on them ends with Rhodes out of commission courtesy of a spiked steel ball upside his coconut. Great, they killed off Tim Thomerson, the only amusing actor in this entire farce, leaving us with Dogen, whose got all the appeal and charisma of a cardboard stand up of Jimmy Smitts. But, Dogen does get us a measure of revenge when he rips off Baal's goo-spewing robo-arm, exposing just how little technological advancement you need to create a cybernetic limb. Hey kids, want a robotic arm of your own? All you'll need for this is some wiring, a few tubes through which to pump various pigments of goop, some sheet metal, a handful of pipe cleaners, some Elmer's Glue and some glitter, metallic stars or other decoration to personalize it to your tastes. You might want to ask mom and dad to help you with the sheet metal and pipe cleaners before you get started... provided you can get their attention long enough for them to stop snorting "happy powder" and throwing end tables and cutlery at each other... then again, maybe it'd just be easier to ask the nice policeman to help you when he comes to take mommy and daddy away again.

It looks like curtains for Doggy though, when Syn's Cyclopean peons seem to have his ticket, but along comes Hurak (STILL Richard Moll), who turns the one-eyed mutants against their master and to the side of good... or at least non-evil. With his plans falling apart around his ankles like a pair of stained tighty-not-so-whiteys, Syn takes the opportunity to put his tail between his legs and make a break for it Cobra Commander style. So, hopping aboard a flying jet cycle, the villain exits stage left with the Seeker in a close second... and the sun suddenly appears from nowhere, turning night into noon. Just when it looks like Dogen will catch up to his prey and finally put an end to the madness, Syn pulls an ace out of his proverbial sleeve and escapes into a temporal tear in the space-time continuum... if it brings a finish to the film, I'm just not gonna ask, it's better for my rapidly decaying gray matter that way. Apparently Band intended on creating at least one sequel for this movie, but didn't for reasons I can understand, namely, the whole idea sucked like an Orik... one of those really powerful vacuums that can hold bowling balls for extended periods of time... perfect if you ever find yourself trapped in a vicious cycle of Tom & Jerry cartoons and get a bowling ball dropped on your head...

In the aftertaste of Metalstorm, I decided to check up on these poor sad fools who were involved in the spawning of such inane Bandian bullshit and see exactly where their roles in this got them. Jeff Byron (Dogen) would go on to do a number of lackluster film roles and uncredited appearances, along with several parts in a few soap operas (often as a doctor of one medicine or another)... Metalstorm may have been the reason for his delve into total obscurity, but who's to say. I am willing to bet it didn't help his sorry ass in the long run though. Michael Preston (Jared-Syn) would suffer a similar fate, only minus the soap opera roles and a far beefier array of forgettable movies roles and appearances. Prior to Metalstorm, Mr. Preston might've had a future in the world of sci-fi action flicks, secured with his role as Papagallo, the leader of the "all dressed in white" desert nomads of Mel Gibson's Mad Max sequel The Road Warrior, but it's safe to say that Chuck Band has cursed his once mediocre name into an oblivion. Tim Thomerson (Rhodes), well, we all know what happened to him, don't we? One of the few people to benefit from his association with the infamous Chuck. Kelly Preston (Dhyanna) was probably the only person from Metalstorm to create a legitimate career with roles in movies like Jerry Maguire... then again she also wound up in Jack Frost (the Michael Keaton family one, not the one with the big styrofoam killing machine) and Battlefield Earth, so I guess the Band curse did catch up to her eventually. Finally, Richard Moll would go on the very next year to star in the role that would make his ugly mug known, as bailiff Bull Shannon on the long since defunct TV series "Night Court". He was also featured in House, Highlander: The Gathering and most recently in Scary Movie 2. Oh yeah, and he also played another one-eyed beastie in an episode of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys".

So, as you can see, Metalstorm: The Destruction Of Jared-Syn was not good for anyone involved. It was also a curse for the few people who have ever or will ever witness it first hand, as I can testify. Though by far not the worst film I've ever seen, it is one of the stinkier creations of Charles Band's crusty mental mangina, and a dingleberry that will be clinging to the ass hairs of my memory banks for a long time to come. Now I think I'll go get my bottle of Southern Comfort resting behind the radiator. Ah, booze, the beede (I'm not sure on the spelling, but it's that drinking fountain/toilet the French use) for the brain...

Sequels: Nope

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Eliminators or The Vindicator