DESTROYER
ONE jackhammer scene. I feel ripped off.
I've been keeping an eye out for this movie for a while - I remember over a decade ago when this hit the big screen, my brother and I got a big kick out of the tag line ("They thought 3000 volts would kill him. It only gave him a buzz!"). Then I find it in the "Action" section, silly me.
Lemme list the things that are wrong with this box. 1) the picture of Anthony Perkins on the back is the weirdest pic of him I've ever seen, and we've all seen him in a dress. 2) there is no way that Lyle Alzado's head, on the cover, is matched to the right body. Just look at it - it looks waaaaay off. 3) there is a scope - a SCOPE! - on the jackhammer. What, to help him aim? 4) it cruelly suggests that the movie's about a jackhammer-wielding killer, when he only has a jackhammer in one scene. 5)the title is unexplained (since nobody actually calls the killer "the Destroyer"), but not so much as the alternate title, The Edison Effect, which I can't wrap my head around at all.
Now, on to the plot. When a big, hulking serial killer (Alzado, who's possibly the only tough guy in history named "Lyle") is given the chair, a prison riot erupts at just the right moment, and his fate becomes, uh, indeterminate, shall we say. Years later, long after the prison's closed down, a filmmaker (Perkins, who's pretty funny, and doesn't look at all embarrassed to be here) decides to shoot a women-in-prison flick in there. Guess who shows up, jackhammer in hand?
This also stars Deborah Foreman, who's appealing as hell (as always) and by all accounts a swell gal, as a stunt double working on the film. You've got to see her hair here - it swoops up in the front like one of those tidal waves that destroyed the east coast in Deep Impact. For some reason, she hasn't been in a movie since 1991.
Also features an obviously crack-addicted FX guy who gives us pearls of wisdom like "Some people dream things and say 'Why not?' I dream things and say 'Whoa. Where am I?'"
The plot's a bit of a mess - a dream sequence at the film's opening just confused the hell out of me once the rest of the movie started. Why would the killer focus in on this one chick? Why would he even know (or care) who she is? Was she REALLY the electrocutioner? Nah. One character turns out to be the killer's dad, and I'm pretty sure that if he were really the dad, it would've been news by then. And there're a whole lot of convenient explosives and the like.
Alzado does a good job when he's actually delivering lines - more often, the script has him cackling like a madman and eating hair. Like I said, Foreman and Perkins are the ones to watch. Overall, it's a disappointment, considering that I was looking forward to a lot of jackhammer-induced death and destruction, but that aside, it was okay.